


Ain't No Place For No Hero

by airshipmechanic



Series: The Magnificent Borderlands [2]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Borderlands AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody Lives, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 12:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airshipmechanic/pseuds/airshipmechanic
Summary: Pandora's no place for heroes. It chews them up and spits them out, and most of them end up either dead or permanently dead drunk somewhere out in the desert. But when Emma Cullen and the settlement of Rose Creek go looking for help, they manage to find a few in some unlikely places.(A continuation of the Borderlands AU that I got too obsessed with to stop writing, which somehow turned into about half a novel that more or less amounts to "so what if the whole movie took place in the world of the Borderlands games?")





	1. A Generous Offer

**Author's Note:**

> If you don't know the Borderlands universe, you'll be fine - I've done my best to explain that which needs explaining.
> 
> If you *do* know the Borderlands universe...yes, I'm playing fast and loose with some pieces of Borderlands canon, making up new Siren powers, and hobbling the Fast Travel and Catch-A-Ride systems for the sake of plot. *pours one out for Scooter*
> 
> This is for funsies and I don't like to be sad, so don't worry, no matter how dark it looks at any given point, everything is going to be okay, I promise.

With Handsome Jack dead and gone and the Helios space station crashed, Hyperion was supposed to be done for. Pandora’s problems were supposed to be reduced to deadly animals, deadly plants, deadly raiders, and the deadly landscape. For a while, that was true. At the Corporations, there was always a new stooge ready to scramble and claw into the C-suite, but most of them weren’t as ruthlessly effective as old Handsome Jack. They didn’t have his appetite for a high-risk proposition like conquering Pandora. They just wanted to make bigger and better weapons, make more and more money, and stick to exploiting much more easily exploitable planets. The conventional wisdom in Hyperion and the other major corporate players was that Handsome Jack’s obsession with Pandora had both made and broken him, and that his comparatively few years at the top of the corporate food chain weren’t worth his end. Let the people of Pandora have their craphole of a planet that was constantly trying to kill them. It wasn’t worth the trouble. 

So for a few years, the Pandorans got to run their own show. They were a long time past the early colonial days when everyone was from somewhere else, just coming to Pandora to make their fortunes. There were people there now who’d been born on that planet, who’d grown up there and chose to stay there instead of finding the first ship off of it. There were others who’d come from some other world, for hundreds of different reasons, and found that Pandora fit them better than anyplace else they’d tried to call home. Despite its dangers, there were people who _loved_ Pandora, and they wanted to make something good out of it. With Dahl and Atlas and Hyperion all finally leaving them alone, they actually started to have some success at it. New settlements sprung up, and old ones were rebuilt and refurbished. Folks started reopening mines – working at a slower pace than the corporations did, but beginning to make a profit. Others got to work on irrigation and terraforming projects, slowly carving out patches of land that could be used to grow food and raise livestock. Pandora was still full of dangerous animals and dangerous plants and dangerous people. It was still a land where everyone was carrying a gun by age ten and you didn’t leave your settlement without making sure your affairs were in order in case you didn’t come back. Mercenary Day was still the only holiday anybody paid much attention to, and _badass_ remained the highest praise that anyone on the planet could give. Nonetheless, it was slowly turning into a place where people could live in something other than constant terror. 

Until the day a new man took over Hyperion’s Security Division: Bartholomew Bogue. 

Bogue had made a name for himself as a ruthless manager, running settlements and mines and construction on dozens of colonies across the Six Galaxies. He lied, cheated, backstabbed, and outright murdered his way to the top, to the point that people were almost as afraid of him as they’d once been of Handsome Jack himself. He was certainly the old CEO’s equal in brutality and ambition, though he hadn’t achieved the title yet, and he aspired to be Jack’s superior. It came as no surprise to anyone who knew Bogue that he was just as determined to bring Pandora to heel as the previous Hyperion leadership had been. 

He came with a star destroyer called the Hades, armed to the teeth, and started up the same line of propaganda Hyperion had shilled under Handsome Jack: they were the heroes of Pandora. They had settled this savage land, made it profitable, made it _matter_. They had civilized a land of bandits and wild freaks of nature, and therefore it belonged to them. Anyone who had ever been to Pandora could contradict those claims, but the Corporations ruled the Six Galaxies in all but name. Trying to convince anyone who wasn’t on Pandora to give a damn about Pandora for anything more than what eridium they could mine from it was mostly a lost cause. 

Thus, when Bogue started taking over settlements on the planet and putting them to work for Hyperion, there wasn’t much people could do. Most mercenaries were happy to take his money and kill for Bogue. Civilians were mostly too afraid to fight. The ones who attempted to hold on to their freedom and their land just ended up dead. The stories got around fast, so by the time word came that Bogue was coming for Rose Creek next, there weren’t many who saw any point in doing anything but rolling over. 

Rose Creek was a smaller settlement, built on the bones of an old Dahl mining camp. They’d reopened the nearby eridium mine themselves, established farms for crops and livestock, and even had something approaching a code of law that wasn’t based entirely on who had the most money or the biggest guns. That made it a target. That also made it the kind of place that would actually hold a town meeting to decide what to do. 

The whole population had gathered in the town hall, with the mayor repeatedly trying to call them to order and largely getting nowhere. They were talking about their land, their homes, their families, everything they had built – of course tempers were running high. 

“We can fight him!” one man insisted. 

“With what army?!” another countered. 

A woman behind him shook her head. “There’s nothing we can do. We’d be outnumbered and outgunned in no time.” 

Another man stood, determination in his pale blue eyes and the set of his jaw. “That doesn’t mean we have to roll over and accept whatever Hyperion wants. They’ve been beaten before, they can be beaten again.” 

“They were beaten by _Vault Hunters_! We’re farmers! Miners! There’s nobody here who could hold off any more than a few drunk bandits!” 

“If we stand together and we stay strong, we could do a lot more than—” 

He was silenced by the sound of the doors behind the assembled crowd sliding open. Harsh sunlight spilled into the room and made a sharp silhouette of the man who walked in, flanked by two mercenaries in combat armor and masked helmets. The man in the center wasn’t dressed like a mercenary, though; he wore a pinstriped suit and a fedora, and if he carried a gun, it wasn’t where anyone could see it. 

“Good afternoon, citizens of Rose Creek!” He said it as though he didn’t have men with assault rifles ready to mow down the whole crowd if it suited him. Like he’d just come to have a friendly chat. Everybody knew better, himself included, but politeness was sometimes as good an intimidation tactic as growling. 

He strolled to the front of the room like he owned it and met the worried looks of the townspeople with a mild expression. “My name is Bartholomew Bogue, Senior Vice President of the Hyperion Corporation’s Security Division. I’ve come to share an exciting opportunity with you. A partnership.” 

Silence echoed through the town hall. People were mostly afraid to even look at each other. Bogue continued as if they were all smiling and nodding. 

“Hyperion will take the burden of land ownership and mine management from you and give you all jobs right here where you are. You won’t have to worry about bandits ever again, because you’ll have Hyperion soldiers stationed right here in town. What’s more, we’ll even compensate you for the land at the extremely fair rate of one thousand dollars per acre.” 

It was the price that finally pushed a man to speak. 

“My land’s worth three times that!” he shouted. His bravery inspired a few others to speak as well, whether to yell a protest or to start talking to their neighbors. Mere seconds later, the blast of a shotgun fired into the air brought the silence back. 

“Right now, I’ve made you a generous offer,” Bogue said. “Take it, and you get protection and work and money. Refuse, and I’ll have to force the issue.” 

It wasn’t a fair deal, not even on its face. What lurked underneath it was even worse, and everyone knew it. But Bogue went stalking out of the town hall like nobody could possibly refuse – because they couldn’t. They could take the deal, they could be violently forced to fulfill their side of the terms, or they could die. Those were the only options Bogue had placed before them, and it clearly never crossed his mind that any others existed. 

The sheer arrogance of it was astounding. Infuriating, in fact. It was so completely appalling that as the people began to disperse in numb horror, one decided he’d had enough. Matthew Cullen, the man who’d insisted that they could stand together and hold fast against Bogue and Hyperion, stepped forward to yell at Bogue’s back. 

“What kind of man are you?” His disgust was audible even without seeing his face, and it was enough to make Bogue turn around. 

“What?” 

As if he hadn’t heard. Matthew knew that he had, but he repeated it again, clearly and forcefully. “What kind of man are you? What kind of man comes to take what other folks built for himself and calls it fair and generous?” 

Bogue didn’t answer. He reached inside his jacket, pulled a pistol, and shot Matthew straight through the heart. 

It was chaos, after that. Matthew Cullen’s wife screaming in horror and rushing to him, others pulling guns to fire on the intruders, Bogue’s men firing back with considerably more power and skill. Six men died in Rose Creek that afternoon, and Bartholomew Bogue walked away without a care in the world. 

“Leave the bodies out a few days,” he told the sheriff on his way out. “They can learn what defying me means.”

* * * 

Not many people who walked into Moxxi’s bar in the floating city of Sanctuary drew the whole place’s attention. It was loud and raucous, filled with gamblers, drunks, and mercenaries of all stripes. It was hard to draw the eye to any one person or thing and keep it there. The man in black got everybody looking at him mostly because anywhere other than Pandora, he wouldn’t stand out at all. Black trousers, black boots, black shirt and jacket, a black cowboy hat, facial hair neatly groomed, guns politely on his belt—he even looked like he’d probably bathed recently. He could’ve walked into a bar on Eden-5 and looked only marginally eccentric due to his monochromatic palette, and on Artemis or Athenas he’d look downright normal. In a place where the barmaid wore a corset, top hat, and clown makeup and the patrons included everything from bandits in gas masks to a Hermesian in full safari gear, however, normal got turned around into weird.

Looking weird got people’s attention, and that gave the people time to notice that it wasn’t just any weirdo walking in the bar. 

“Excuse me, Miss Moxxi,” the man said, polite as anything. That was weird, too, but Moxxi seemed to appreciate it. 

“What can I do for you, sugar?” She put on one of her best sultry smiles, despite the fact that she had absolutely no intention whatsoever of answering whatever questions he put to her. At least, not directly or obviously. 

“Looking for a man named Powder Dan,” he said. “Word has it he’s been around Sanctuary. You know anything about that?” 

The bar was getting quieter all around as the patrons tried to listen to the conversation despite the thumping bass of the music. 

“Sorry, honey,” Moxxi said, accompanying her apologetic tone with a delicate tilt of her chin. It passed for a negative to most of the room, which was exactly what it was intended to do. It also told the bounty hunter exactly where to look, which was also exactly what it was intended to do. 

“Thank you for your time, miss.” He tipped his black hat and turned to the right, eyes settling on a waiter with a ragged beard and a shifty gaze. He walked to the section where that waiter was serving and leaned up against one of the booths there. 

“’scuse me, I’d like to order a pizza,” he said. He was looking the waiter dead in the eyes, like a man who knew something. 

“We’re out of pizza,” the waiter said. He was trying to look tough, and mostly just looking terrified. He knew who he was, after all, and he knew who the man in front of him was, too. 

“Out of pizza?” An arched eyebrow expressed the bounty hunter’s disbelief. “Well, that is too bad. I don’t suppose _you_ would know the whereabouts of one Powder Dan, would you?” 

The waiter shook his head determinedly. “Never heard of ‘im.” 

At the next table over, a poker game had grown very, very quiet, and very interested in what was going on next to them. One of the players started to reach for his gun, and the one to his right silently advised against it. He knew what a man you shouldn’t fuck around with looked like. 

That man had leaned in to whisper something to the waiter. Whatever it was, it succeeded in changing old Powder Dan’s mind about trying to deny his identity. 

“I changed!” he insisted, and the bounty hunter’s face didn’t change a bit. 

“Men like you don’t change.” 

“I found religion! I got a family now!” 

“They’re better off without you,” the hunter said, and it was clear then that if someone was looking for Powder Dan dead or alive, dead might well be the preferred option. 

Powder Dan never got his gun out of his holster. He tried, but the bounty hunter was a hell of a lot faster. He was faster than the other three patrons of the bar who tried to pull their criminal acquaintance out of hot water, too, putting a bullet in one right after the other like it was nothing. Everybody else, meanwhile, was making a run for it, bolting out all three exits to the bar. 

Everybody but one. The poker player who’d suggested his acquaintance keep his gun holstered was still sitting there, watching the bounty hunter with detached interest.  
“I’d just ordered a pizza from him,” he said, sounding no more than mildly disappointed. 

“Guess you’ll have to wait a while.” 

Just then, Moxxi set a shot of squill syrup on the bar, which the man in black took as his due, politely lifting the glass to toast the lady before emptying it in one swallow.  
“Take out the trash for me?” Moxxi requested. She trusted he’d know what she meant. 

Sure enough, he lifted Powder Dan’s body over his shoulder and walked out the door as the poker player started gathering up all the money the other players had abandoned. A crowd had assembled by the front entrance, having fetched Sheriff McReady up from his nap to handle this business. 

“My name is Sam Chisolm, licensed bounty hunter in Andromeda, Whirligig, and two other galaxies!” he called as he stepped onto the front steps, loud and clear so the even the ones at the back could hear him. Plenty of folks knew him in Sanctuary, but there were plenty more who didn’t. 

“I know damn well who you are, Sam Chisolm!” the sheriff grumbled, because he’d been living in this town since it was still on the ground and home to the Crimson Raiders HQ. “You got the warrant?” 

Sam reached into his jacket to pull out a folded piece of worn paper to hand over. “This is Powder Dan, wanted by the Central Government and the Torgue Corporation for seven murders, including one of a child under the age of 10, eighteen robberies, and a train hijacking resulting in the loss of four million dollars and thirty lives.” 

“Well, I’ll be.” McReady looked over the paper and the likeness pictured. Sure enough, that was Powder Dan, and he’d been serving up drinks and pizzas at Moxxi’s for the past couple months like he’d never murdered more than maybe one or two people. “I’ll record the bounty and see the body tossed off the edge,” he said. Sanctuary didn’t exactly have space for a graveyard floating in the sky like it did, so the bodies nobody cared about had a tendency to become the crater down below’s problem. 

“Thank you kindly,” Sam replied with a courteous tip of his hat. At that point, he considered the situation handled. Time to be off to the next job, whatever it might be and wherever it might take him. He walked through the crowd and past them, toward Sanctuary’s bounty board, paying no mind to any of the looks being turned his way.  
There was one woman, however, who was intent on getting his attention. 

“Mr. Chisolm!” she called, and when he didn’t turn around, she called out again, louder. “Mr. Chisolm! Please, we need your help.” 

That got him to stop and look, at least. He took the sight of her in with the analytical eye of a man who made his living reading people. She was slight, slim, wearing the proper blouse and jacket and trousers of a respectable but not wealthy civilian lady, with red hair tied back out of her face. A pretty face with a determined expression, but that wasn’t what was most notable about it. No, the significant feature there was the blue linework that became visible at her temple and swooped and curved down to where the high neck of her blouse started. _That_ was what caused the look of surprise on Sam Chisolm’s face as he gave her his full attention. 

“You can’t afford me,” he said. “And anyway, what’s a Siren want with a bounty hunter?” he asked. With those blue tattoos, she couldn’t be anything else. There were only six in the world at any given time, so most people would never have seen one, but Sam Chisolm had been a Crimson Raider back when Lilith still showed up on occasion. He’d also seen Lilith fight, and he’d been there when she phase-shifted this whole city up into the air. He knew what kind of power Sirens were capable of. Given that, he couldn’t imagine why one would be chasing after him with such urgency. 

“Being a Siren doesn’t make me a fighter, Mr. Chisolm,” she said, quiet and firm. “And my town needs a man like you. Hyperion’s trying to take it.” 

“Hyperion?” Sam snorted. “You don’t need a man, you need an army.” 

“An army’s nothing but a group of men,” she said. “They just need someone to lead them. And someone who’s brave enough to face down a whole bar is brave enough to face Bartholomew Bogue, too.” 

Had she not said that name, he might have walked away. But she did, and Sam stayed put. “Bartholomew Bogue? Isn’t he head of Hyperion’s Security Division? Most folks would just stay out of his way.” 

“He killed my husband, Mr. Chisolm. Shot him down in the street like a skag.” 

Sam nodded, understanding her determination at last. “So you seek revenge.” 

“I seek righteousness, as should we all,” she said, standing strong and stubborn. “But I’ll settle for revenge.” She could tell she had him. If he was going to tell her no, he would have done it by now. “My name is Mrs. Emma Cullen, and this is my associate, Teddy Q. We’ve come seeking aid for the town of Rose Creek, and we’re willing to pay for that aid.” 

“How much?” Sam asked her. He took only slight note of the quiet young man behind her. It was clear that Emma was the one in charge here. 

“All we have.” She handed up a satchel filled with the meager savings and valuables of a town. 

Sam took it from her and looked inside. It wasn’t anything close to the kind of money he’d normally make on a job, much less to what he’d make on an _impossible_ job. But she wanted to take down Bogue, and Sam had his own reasons for wanting the same thing. 

“All you have…” he mused. “Guess that’s a lot, then. You’ve got yourself a general, ma’am.”

* * *

The gambler had gathered his money and the pizza box from someone else’s table, gave Mad Moxxi a wink and a grin, and skipped out. He was headed for the garage, meaning to see if the mods on his Lancer were done and hit the Fast Travel network to go straight to the Dust and get wasted in Overlook. He could buy up half the bar at the Holy Spirits with his take from the game, and that would make for a hell of a good week before he had to find another bit of work to get him drunk again.

He was making good time down the back streets (so as to avoid the men whose money he’d scooped up) until he got waylaid by a completely different set of enemies: last week's poker opponents.

“You stop right there, Joshua Faraday!” 

He already had his pistol drawn and pointed at Faraday’s back. If Faraday had been less drunk or less pleased with himself, they never would’ve gotten the drop on him, but they had. He put his hands up and sighed with the disappointment not of a man who was about to die, but of a man who knew he was dealing with serious idiots. Idiocy was common among bandits, but these two were an impressive level of stupid. 

“What do you want, Jerry?” Faraday asked, sounding a lot more annoyed than afraid, which was really not what Jerry had been going for. 

“It’s The Two-Gun Kid!” Jerry insisted, and sure enough, he did have two pistols pointed at Faraday. 

“On account of you having two guns?” Faraday asked, despite how painfully obvious and painfully stupid the moniker was. There wasn’t a damn thing unusual or interesting about having two guns on Pandora, which meant that this one, bless his heart, was making up his own nicknames. 

“Shut up!” the Two-Gun Kid said with a scowl, waving both guns furiously. 

“Told you it was a dumb name," his brother said, not that he was actually any smarter. 

“You shut up too, and take his guns!” 

He followed orders, stepping up to take the pistols from the holsters on Faraday’s belt. He was unaware at the time of what a very big mistake he was making. He probably should’ve figured it out when Faraday started grinning at him, but some people never did know what was good for them. 

“Wanna see a magic trick?” 

Three minutes later, both the brothers were tossed in the alley behind Doc Zed’s place, and Faraday was once more on his way to the garage. Once he was there, however, he found himself disappointed for the second time that day. He asked after his car, and the short guy who’d taken over Scooter’s old place just shook his head. 

“Oh, no,” he said with a smirk. “You bet your ride last night, and I won it. That Lancer’s mine now.” 

“What?” Faraday looked confused. “No way, I—wait. That dream with the redneck leprechaun and the dice game was real?” 

“Sure was!” The man didn’t much care for being likened to a leprechaun, but he was still pleased with his acquisition. Lancers weren’t easy to come by these days.  
Faraday was about to argue further when Sam Chisolm walked up behind him. 

“How much for the Lancer?” the bounty hunter asked. 

“Thousand bucks,” replied the garage owner. 

Without further comment, Sam counted out the money and handed it over. He looked over the Faraday. “You looking for work?” 

“What’s it pay?” Faraday asked. It looked like he needed about a thousand dollars. 

“Pay is one Lancer,” Sam replied. 

“What’s the job?” Faraday asked next. He was going to do it regardless, because he wanted his damn car back, but he’d still like to know what he was signing up for.

“Liberating a town and convincing Hyperion they ought to go back to leaving Pandora alone.” Sam said it like it wasn’t impossible. “It oughta take an army.” 

“How many ya got so far?” 

“Two,” Sam replied. 

Faraday eyed Teddy and Emma with skepticism. All right, so the girl was clearly a Siren, and they could basically do _real_ magic, but the other one looked like he’d never shot a gun in his life. “Them?” 

“Nah, you and me.” 

Confident sonuvabitch, wasn’t he? Probably stupidly confident, but Faraday had always appreciated that in a person, as long as they were on his side. “Guess we better get going, then.”

“Guess so.” Sam nodded toward the street. “C’mon, we’re headed for the Fast Travel.” 

Faraday kept talking as they all started walking. “Where’re we going from there?” 

“You and Teddy Q are headed for the Torgue Arena in the Badass Crater of Badassitude,” Sam replied without looking back. “You’re looking for a man named Robicheaux.” 

Faraday’s eyebrows shot up. “ _Goodnight_ Robicheaux? Deadliest sniper in the Corporate Wars? That Robicheaux?” He knew that name for sure. Everyone who’d been in Maliwan’s army or faced off against it knew that name. Faraday hadn’t been much more than a kid when he’d signed up, but it still hadn’t been too long ago to remember. 

“That’s the one. Tell him Sam Chisolm needs his help, he’ll come.” 

“Well all right.” Faraday let out a low whistle. “Where you gonna be while we hunt down the Angel of Death?” 

“Mrs. Cullen and I are headed to the Badlands to find a Vault Hunter named Alejandro Vasquez,” Sam replied. “Might take a little while, so you two meet us in Liar’s Berg in three days.”


	2. Now We Are Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the rest of the Seven are assembled.

The Torgue Arena was the biggest fighting arena on Pandora, funded by the Torgue Corporation as a way to advertise weapons. It was built on top of an ancient Eridian Vault and equipped with state-of-the-art battle technology, able to reconfigure itself for a number of different contests. Arena fighters took on bots, soldiers, bandits, beasts, and each other in its giant ring, to the great entertainment of thousands of spectators. The place was as legendary as Mad Moxxi’s Underdome had been back in the day. Truth be told, Faraday would’ve been happy to pay it a visit even if he hadn’t been sent there for work. He had a distinct spring in his step as he started leading the way into the spectator area after they materialized in the Fast Travel station. 

“I came here once when I was a kid,” Faraday said, oblivious to the nervous way Teddy was eyeing most of the other spectators, a mishmash of bandits, psychos, and badasses. “This guy named Piston was number one in the arena back then. He drove this huge bot called the Badassasaurus. It looked like a damn dinosaur, breathed fire, had turrets…some folks called him a coward for taking people on that way, but I figure, use every advantage you can get, right? And if the advantage you’ve got is a fire-breathing dinosaur robot, you use the hell out of it!” 

As they pushed through the crowd, they finally got a view of the current contest. In the center of the arena was a lithe man with long black hair wound up in a knot at the back of his head. His left arm was sleek black metal under his rolled-up sleeve, and his right eye had the distinctive yellow glow of a cybernetic implant. There was another implant visible at his left temple, glowing purple like eridium ore. A cyborg, then – something more or less than human, depending on who you asked.

“LISTEN UP, SKAGS AND SCAVVERS!” The PA was loud enough to make Teddy flinch, while Faraday just leaned forward on the railing in glee. “THIS HERE CHALLENGER IS BILLY ROCKS! TIME TO WATCH ‘IM DIIIIIIIIE!!!” 

Nobody bet on the challenger in one of these places, not if they had any sense. The games were pretty much always rigged, set up to make sure the house won. They went through challengers like Mad Moxxi went through boyfriends. The good ones put up a hell of a show, though, and based on the way Billy Rocks was going through the first round of Torgue Loader-Bots, he was definitely one of the good ones. He zipped around from one to another without any change in expression, firing pistols in both hands – he didn’t even _look_ at all of them. He took down the first wave and looked like he wasn’t even trying. 

“Damn he’s fast,” Teddy murmured, eyes wide. Faraday had been to the arena before, but Teddy had never seen anything like it. He’d certainly never seen anything like Billy Rocks, who was now taking on the second wave, a round of War Loaders. He dodged their cannons without faltering, occasionally disappearing only to rematerialize behind a bot and take it out at the knees with a single slash of two glowing blue knives. 

“What the hell?!” Teddy exclaimed at the disappearing/reappearing act. 

“That’s assassin tech!” Faraday said at almost the same time, delighted rather than confused. He was nice enough to clarify a little for Teddy. “They built the infiltrator and holo tech for assassin droids during the corporate wars – lets them turn invisible, and sometimes turn invisible and project a distraction at the same time. I’ve never seen it on anyone even part human before, though, unless you count cloaking armor. He must have some crazy kind of prototype shit.” 

By the third wave, Faraday looked just as awed as Teddy did. It was Sergeant Loaders now, plus a slew of human opponents: Torgue soldiers in full armor, commandos throwing down turrets from multiple directions, even a couple of snipers. Still, Billy Rocks never looked fazed. He was concentrating, clearly, but he never faltered, never missed a step. He only got hit _once_ , a bullet to his shoulder, and even that didn’t seem to slow him down. He took down all those fighters just like the first two rounds, until the disappointed announcer finally had to declare him the winner. 

Nearby, a well-dressed man was coming around collecting money from folks who had thought they were taking the smart bet by putting their markers on the house. He was tall and lanky, mouse-brown hair flattened by the hat he was now using to collect his winnings. His beard was threaded with a bit of grey, and his suit was clearly well-made despite showing the signs of wear, much like the top-of-the-line-but-older sniper rifle on his back. He didn’t look excited about the amount of money he was collecting, which made Faraday file him into the category of Smart People – nobody with a lick of sense would be crowing about winning in this crowd, not if they didn’t want a real messy death. 

The man and his hat came before a surly-looking pair of bandits. “No way,” one of them said. “Your boy cheated. I ain’t giving you a cent.”

Beside him, his friend’s eyes widened. “That’s Goodnight Robicheaux,” he hissed in panicked warning. 

The previously stubborn bandit was smart enough to immediately look apologetic (and terrified), because he’d come here for entertainment, not to get a bullet between his eyes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Robicheaux!” he stammered out quickly. 

Goodnight Robicheaux’s expression didn’t change at all. 

“That’s all right, son. You can pay me double.” 

The bandit didn’t even blink, just handed over double the money and thanked whatever powers might be that he was going to walk away from insulting the Angel of Death.  
Faraday and Teddy let Robicheaux finish making his rounds, keeping an eye on him as he made his way through the crowd collecting money. From there, they followed him out to the impromptu town that had sprung up around the arena in the last few years. The town existed to serve the same kind of clientele that the arena did, which meant it was mostly bars, food vendors, and weapons dealers. Glowing neon signs advertised their wares, and the street was filled with the sounds of drunken shouts and the driving beat of a band set up on the sidewalk. Their mark got a little harder to follow in the mass of people, but eventually they caught up to him at a bar called the Skag Nabbit. 

He was sitting on one side of a booth with Billy Rocks, the arena fighter they’d been watching. They had a glass each of some kind of bright green liquor, and the two of them were passing a cigarette back and forth – Faraday could tell from the smell that it wasn’t _just_ tobacco, but it didn’t smell like enough of anything else for him to place it. Folks smoked all kinds of stuff in places like this. 

“You Goodnight Robicheaux?” Faraday asked as they approached. 

“The very same. To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

Faraday had heard the man came from Eden-6, and lord did he sound like it. It was the kind of smooth, cultured accent that you typically didn’t hear on Pandora. His rifle, too, was a sign he was telling the truth: a genuine Maliwan Rakehell, with the distinctive blue-and-black stock that marked it as a real firespitting piece of the Corporate Wars.

“Sam Chisolm sent us,” Faraday said, because it had never occurred to him to not do the talking, despite Teddy right beside him. 

“Sam Chisolm, former lieutenant of the Crimson Raiders and authorized bounty hunter in Andromeda, Whirligig, and two other galaxies?” Goodnight asked with a chuckle. He took the cigarette back from Billy, whose expression hadn’t changed over the course of the conversation. 

“That’s the one.” Faraday snorted, glad to know there was someone out there who didn’t take Sam Chisolm serious as a heart attack. 

Goodnight took one long drag and passed the cigarette back to Billy. “I do owe him a favor or two.” An understatement, not that his audience would know that. “What’s the job?” 

“Defending the town of Rose Creek and taking down Bartholomew Bogue and kicking Hyperion off Pandora for good,” Faraday replied. He’d already taken up Sam’s habit of saying that like it wasn’t impossible. 

Goodnight looked to Billy. He didn’t need any words to ask the question. As long as they’d been together, a lift of an eyebrow got it across. 

“We’re in,” Billy said, the first words he’d bothered to speak. 

Teddy piped in then, as well, looking worried again. “Mr. Chisolm told us to find Goodnight Robicheaux. He didn’t say anything about Billy Rocks.” 

“Where I go, Billy goes,” Goodnight said, in a manner that didn’t brook any arguments. 

“Fine with me,” Faraday said. “’specially after seeing him in the arena.” Most people didn’t trust cyborgs any further than they could throw them, but whatever Faraday’s flaws, unthinking prejudice had never been one of them. Besides, they were taking a job they ought to have an army for, and Billy Rocks seemed pretty close to being one all by himself. 

Teddy was curious, though, at finding a cyborg and a Corporate Wars legend running together. “How did you two even manage to meet?” 

The question made Goodnight laugh, and he looked over to Billy with a grin. “How did we meet, Billy?” Billy wasn’t going to answer, and Goodnight knew it, so he carried on. “About ten years ago, I was working as a bounty hunter, and Billy was wanted for political assassinations and abandoned debt. I’d tracked him to the town of Overlook, where he was attempting to order whiskey, but the fine citizens of the Zaford clan didn’t want to serve Billy’s kind. He insisted, they tried to throw him out, and I watched this petite sonuvabitch take on the whole damn bar without even blinking. So I said to myself, Goodnight, this is not a man to arrest, this is a man to befriend. We’ve been working together ever since.”

More than just working together, Teddy thought, judging by how close they were sitting and the fact that they had a whole pack of cigarettes but they were sharing one between them. Their business arrangement had piqued Teddy’s curiosity too, though. 

“So…he fights and you get the money?” It didn’t sound like a fair deal, but Teddy knew that people who had too much robot in them often didn’t get a fair deal. 

“Equal shares,” Billy said flatly, considering that an important point to make known. “Fifty-fifty.” 

Now it was Faraday’s turn to look puzzled by the arrangement. “So you risk your neck…what does _he_ do?” 

“Goody talks to people,” Billy said, which he felt summed it up rather neatly. 

Goodnight figured it required some explanation, however. “I find jobs, arrange arena matches, negotiate fees, provide backup, and make sure Billy can get a drink anywhere on Pandora.” 

“And he drives,” Billy added. 

“He drives?” It seemed a weird thing to find important, and Teddy was still looking confused. 

Billy shrugged. “I don’t like to drive.” Like that was that. 

It was good enough for Faraday, at least, who slapped his knee and grinned at the both of them. “Well, we’re supposed to meet Chisolm in Liar’s Berg in three days. We found you in one, so I reckon that gives us two days of drinking!” 

Billy gave no more than a faint sign of amusement, but Goodnight laughed out loud. “I like you,” he said, pointing at Faraday, and then lifted his hand to signal for another round.

* * *

Sam Chisolm’s new Lancer flew fast and smooth down the old mining highway into the Badlands. He could see why Faraday was so fond of the thing. Hopefully he’d live to earn it back.

“You say this man Vasquez is a Vault Hunter?” Emma asked. She sounded skeptical, mostly because she couldn’t imagine how they were going to get a Vault Hunter to help them. Vault Hunters were legends on Pandora, the biggest badasses of them all. Vault Hunters could one-shot a giant skag. Vault Hunters held number one slots at the fighting arenas and the death races. Vault Hunters had taken out Handsome Jack when no one else could. Vault Hunters also repeatedly wreaked havoc on Pandora and were well known for being motivated almost exclusively by money. Emma knew they could barely afford Chisolm – how in the hell were they going to afford a Vault Hunter? 

“Mm-hm.” Sam kept an eye on the road, but he was starting to look around more, keeping his eyes open for the shack that the woman back in Oasis had told them she’d seen Vasquez heading for. “Comes from Artemis, originally, and showed up here with a lot of others looking for the Vault of the Warrior. Somewhere along the way, he made somebody important at Jakobs mad enough to put one hell of a price on his head, and now he’s got every bounty hunter in this galaxy looking for him.” 

So that was Mr. Chisolm’s leverage, then. Emma nodded, eyes fixed out the window. Sam glanced over at her, and once again his attention was drawn to the blue tattoos swirling around her hairline and down her neck. 

“You know you’re the third Siren I’ve met?” He didn’t want to launch all the way into prying questions, but he was curious, and so far, Mrs. Cullen didn’t talk much. He was hoping he could get her to open up a little bit, at least enough to tell what kind of advantage she could give them in the coming fight. 

“I’ve never met any others,” she replied, her gaze still on the desert flying by out the window. “I’ve heard about some – the one who worked for Handsome Jack, the two who were Vault Hunters, the general – but I’ve never seen any others or talked to them.” 

“The Vault Hunters were the ones I knew,” Sam said. “Even got to see Lilith in action a few times, back when I was with the Crimson Raiders. She’s the one who phase-shifted Sanctuary up into the air.” 

“I can’t do anything like that.” Emma looked a little startled that such a thing was even possible. 

“Neither could she, ‘til she started absorbing eridium.” Sam shrugged. “Not that I’m suggesting you should – it didn’t seem to do anything for Maya’s power, and I try to leave the unethical science experiments to the unethical scientists.” He let the silence hang a moment, and then he finally asked the question that had been on his mind. “What _can_ you do?” 

“Plants,” Emma answered. She still sounded quiet and distracted, maybe a little self-conscious. “You heard about the Siren who could make animals do what she wanted? I can make plants do what I want. Grow bigger, bloom, bear fruit, wither, die…” She let the sentence trail, then gathered her thoughts up again. “Handy powers for a farmer, but not much use to a fighter.” 

Sam wasn’t so sure about that. He’d fought a lot of battles where he was outnumbered, and he was more accustomed to creative violence than the woman in the passenger seat. He was already getting a few ideas for how they could put Mrs. Cullen’s skills to use. 

But that would have to wait, because he was pretty sure they’d found their shack. He slowed the car, stopping it some distance away. Taking a bounty alive was always easier if you got the drop on them, and though he wasn’t taking this one the same way as usual, the principles remained the same. 

“We’ll make a slow approach,” he said. “Keep quiet, and keep your hand on your gun.” 

Emma nodded, apparently already getting started on the “keep quiet” part of Sam’s orders. Stubborn as she was, she was also smart, and she’d hired Sam Chisolm because violence wasn’t something she knew anything about. She knew when to give the orders and when to follow them. 

There was no sound around the shack even as they drew closer to it. None of the usual signs of life were visible, and it was easy to wonder if they’d been led astray. Sam pushed the door open from the side, giving himself more of a view of the single room than the room would have of him. That was when the smell hit. 

Emma flinched at it – that was the smell of death and decay, and after being boxed up in that little shack for who knows how long, it was _powerful_. It came from a dead body propped up in a chair in the corner, easily visible as they entered and brought some light into the room. “Is that Vasquez?” she asked, voice strained from the way the smell was choking her. 

“No, he—” Sam didn’t get to finish, cut off by Emma’s startled yelp as the man they were looking for swept in behind and slung a hook around her ankle, pulling her feet out from under her. Sam wasn’t looking to be a threat, not while Emma was on the floor with a gun pointed at her. He put his hands up in surrender, far from his guns, where Vasquez could easily see them. 

“Drop the gun,” Vasquez ordered, and Emma reluctantly and angrily complied, dropping her weapon and glaring mulishly up at him. 

“You Vasquez?” Sam asked, ready to have a nice calm chat. 

“What’s it to you?” the man in the doorway asked. 

“If I’m gonna tear up a warrant, I wanna make sure I’m talking to the right man,” Sam said. “I’ve got a job offer for you.” 

“Oh?” Vasquez looked interested, at least. “The job involve Miss Siren here?” 

Emma furiously tried to disentangle herself from the hook and rope he’d slung around her. She got even more furious when the man had the nerve to try to shush her like a recalcitrant child. He was _amused_ by her anger, and it made her want to kick his shiny white teeth in. 

“You wipe that smile off your face!” she snarled, and lord, she wished she was the type of Siren who could blow things up and set them on fire just then. She’d do both to this Vasquez, who was now cheerily ignoring her. 

“She’s the one we’re doing the job for,” Sam said. 

“And when the job’s over?” 

Sam shrugged. “You’ll still have a lot of bounty hunters after you.” 

“And that’s supposed to comfort me?” 

“Yes, because I won’t be one of them.” 

Vasquez chuckled at that – this man thought himself the equivalent of every other bounty hunter in the galaxy put together? Bold words. But then again, he had succeeded in finding Vasquez all the way out in the Badlands, so he might be right about that. 

“Who are you, amigo?” Vasquez asked. 

“Sam Chisolm, certified bounty hunter in Andromeda, Whirligig, and two other galaxies,” he said, which made Vasquez laugh again. 

“And Miss Siren?” 

“Mrs,” Emma snapped from the floor, continuing to be profoundly annoyed with the Vault Hunter’s easy good humor. “Mrs. Emma Cullen.” 

With the same lazy grin, Vasquez spun his gun around and holstered it. “All right, let’s go.” 

He offered his hand to Emma to help her up, only to be met with a steely glare. She got to her feet on her own, picking her gun up from where Vasquez had kicked it away and still looking at him like she was seriously considering slapping him. That was, of course, because she was indeed seriously considering slapping him. 

“Oh, come on, _hermosa_ , don’t be like that,” Vasquez said. He was handsome enough to pout or flatter his way out of most trouble that he couldn’t shoot his way out of. 

Emma wasn’t having it, brushing off her jacket and stalking out the door, with Sam laughing behind her. “Shotgun!” she yelled as soon as she’d stepped out into the light. It was childish, she knew, but damned if that man was taking the front seat from her after knocking her to the floor and laughing about it. 

“ _Carajo_!” Vasquez hadn’t actually figured on taking the front seat from a lady, but he thought it might soften her up a little if she felt like she’d annoyed him and gotten a bit of her own back. By the time they reached their destination (which he probably ought to have asked about, now that he considered it), he intended to have her charmed. Not for the sake of getting her into bed (though he wouldn’t say no if she was offering – or to Sam Chisolm, for that matter), but because while he never got too bothered by people trying to kill him, he actually hated it when they disliked him on a personal level. He had enough faith in his own force of personality to think that he could change Emma’s mind. 

No one was more surprised than Emma to find that Vasquez was right about that. The trip out to the Tundra took hours, which gave him time to apologize for the unfortunate circumstances of their introduction, tell funny stories that made her smile in spite of herself, ask intelligent questions about the job ahead of them, start up a game of “My Skags,” and lead the whole car in a rousing rendition of “To the Top.” By the time they’d reached Liar’s Berg, Emma wouldn’t have admitted it, but she had decided that Vasquez wasn’t the very worst after all, and she felt steadier on her feet than she had since she saw her husband gunned down. 

They found the rest of the team in a bar called the Icehole – the only bar or restaurant in Liar’s Berg. The place had recovered from the bandit assaults that had chased away the whole population, but it was still a small town. There were only a few other patrons there, few enough that they were noticed as soon as they walked in. 

“Sam Chisolm!” Goodnight was on his feet right away, with a warm smile and a hug that indicated these two weren’t just acquaintances, but old friends. 

Sam looked just as happy to see Goodnight, pulling back from the hug to grin at him. “Rain ain’t nothin’ but wet,” he said, sounding like he’d said it a hundred times. 

“And what we lost in the fire, we will find in the ashes,” Goodnight replied. That phrase sounded like old habit, as well. 

“Vasquez, Mrs. Cullen, meet Goodnight Robicheaux,” Sam said as he stepped back. 

Goodnight turned on the charm, of course, like he always did when he met a lady. He took her hand and bowed over it, placing a kiss at her knuckles. Behind him, Billy fondly rolled his eyes. “ _Enchanté_ , Mrs. Cullen,” he said, and glanced back to see that Billy was approaching just as he expected he would. “Allow me to present my companion, Mr. Billy Rocks.” 

Billy, not one for frills or talking, nodded to her, and then to Sam. He’d never met Sam, but he’d heard enough about him over the years to enjoy having a face for the name. 

“Billy Rocks?” Sam tilted his head. “Thought he was dead.” 

Goodnight shrugged. “Officially, yes. Actually, no.” 

“Guess that explains how Hyperion’s leading assassin disappeared from the bounty rolls,” Sam said. “I assume you’ve got no problem going after your former employer?” 

Billy smiled like a shark. “It will be my pleasure.” 

Faraday and Teddy had come on up to the rest of the crowd by then, Teddy coming to make sure Emma was all right and Faraday taking Vasquez’s measure with a long look.  
“So, this our whole crew?” Faraday asked.  
“  
We’ve got one more to pick up, I hope,” Sam said. “Jack Horne’s supposed to be out this way.” 

“I’ve heard of him,” Teddy said, but he looked confused at the fact his name was coming up. “I would’ve thought he was dead.” 

“Yeah, isn’t he a million or so years old?” Faraday asked. “The guy came here with fuckin’ Dahl.” 

“He’s been on Pandora a long time, yes,” Sam patiently replied. “But the first colonization was actually slightly less than a million years ago, and we’re in a beggars-can’t-be-choosers situation here. He’s a good enough man that he’ll agree to come along, or at least he was when I knew him, and he’s a genius with turret and bomb placement.” 

“Guess we’re gonna go find us an old man, then.” Faraday shrugged. Not much seemed to faze him, even if maybe it should, so being mildly told off was no problem. 

One of the Liar’s Berg locals managed to point them toward Horne’s home, a shipping container on stilts in the middle of the permafrost on top of the lake. When they got there, however, the man didn’t appear to be home. The only people present were a pair of scavvers intent on looting the place – not that there was much worth looting. Bullymong furs and skag jerky and the Holy Book of the Church of the Vault, nothing anybody’d really want. Except, of course, for what they were excitedly claiming as a trophy. 

“This here’s Jack Horne’s rifle!” one of them proudly declared. The old Dahl piece did have Horne’s name etched into the side, but neither one of these two looked capable of taking out a rabbit, much less a legendary commando. Even Faraday, who’d made all the cracks about how they were searching for an ancient artifact on the way, looked skeptical. 

“How’d _you_ get Jack Horne’s rifle?” Faraday asked. 

“We faced him in mortal combat!” the other one said. 

Vasquez snorted in disbelief. There was absolutely no way. If these two had killed Jack Horne, it was because they put poison in his coffee when he wasn’t looking. He was about to say as much when an ax came flying past his head to lodge in one of the robbers. Right behind the axe was a huge man, broad as a barn, dressed in skag leather and bullymong fur, and stomping furiously toward the man who held his rifle. 

As expected, the scavver couldn’t shoot worth a damn. He panicked, fired into the air, fell on his ass, and seconds later found the rifle snatched from his hand and the stock slammed hard into the side of his head. Whether he was dead or just out cold was anybody’s guess, if anybody had cared enough to guess. 

Horne turned around on the rest of them, still somewhere between infuriated and indignant. “Those bastards snuck up on me while I was fishing! Knocked me in the head!” He pointed to the blood on his face, as if they might not have put two and two together. “Took my money and my rifle _and_ my fish!” 

None of his audience were entirely sure what to say to that. The man honestly didn’t seem to be all there. The way he moved and his emotional reactions were just a little off-kilter. He threw an axe like a lot of the Psycho bands did, too. He didn’t seem to be quite _that_ out of it, though. Maybe not all there, but he was still using sentences that made sense and weren’t about worm salads or meat puppets. 

Sam was the one who found words first. “We’re looking for men for a job, Mr. Horne,” he said, making sure Horne wasn’t about to get the idea that they were here to rob him as well. “Good men, like you.” 

For a moment, Horne looked like he was thinking about it. Like he was thinking about something, anyway. A few seconds passed, and then he walked past them, shaking his head, walking around back of the place he called home. 

“I don’t do that no more,” he muttered. 

“We could sure use your help. Bart Bogue’s taken another town, and he’s aiming to take this whole planet back for Hyperion,” Sam said, but there was no response other than Jack Horne climbing up the ladder to his house. Sam wasn’t quite ready to give up yet, though, not completely. He looked up at the house and raised his voice, making sure Horne could hear him. “If you change your mind, we’re heading for Rose Creek, in the Highlands!” 

Up the ladder, a window slammed loudly shut. 

Uncomfortable silence followed once again, until Faraday broke it. 

“I think that bullymong was wearing people clothes,” he lightly remarked. It drew a few snickers from the others, but it was time to move on. Sam started walking and waved for the others to follow. 

“Goodnight, you’ve got a Technical in the Catch-a-Ride, right?” he asked. 

“Yes, and a Runner,” he said. 

“No Runners,” Billy flatly replied. It would be a cold day in the Elpis Crack before he’d have Goody driving a Runner or a Racer or a Moon Buggy or anything else people could shoot through the front of. 

“Technical’s all we need,” Sam said. “There’s no Fast Travel to Rose Creek, so we’ll have to drive it, and my Lancer’ll only hold four.” 

“ _Your_ Lancer?” Faraday complained. 

“Bought it fair and square,” Sam blithely replied, starting to smile. “Tell you what, though, I’ll let you ride in it.” 

“Shotgun,” Emma said. Faraday and Vasquez both groaned. 

“You can’t call shotgun until the car’s in view!” Faraday protested. “Them’s the rules!” 

“I call shotgun in the Technical,” Vasquez said. 

Billy and Goodnight both snorted, and Goodnight laughed. “Billy has permanent shotgun in the Technical,” he said. 

Faraday groaned dramatically yet again. “You people have _no respect_ for the sacred Pandoran rules of shotgun!” 

“Incorrect,” Goodnight coolly replied. “I have called this planet my home for fifteen years, and I have nothing but reverence for its sacred culture and traditions, including shotgun, which is why I can now remind you that everybody more than twelve years old knows about the Permanent Shotgun For Long-Term Girlfriends, Boyfriends, Lovers, And Spouses exception.” 

“How does _he_ qualify for—wait, are you two _together_?” 

Faraday suddenly felt the whole group’s incredulous eyes on him. Vasquez in particular was giving him a look generally reserved for particularly idiotic statements. 

“You’ve been drinking with them for three days,” Vasquez said, marveling at the sheer obliviousness this misunderstanding required. 

“I thought they were just real good buddies!” Faraday was getting defensive now that he had nearly the entire group literally laughing out loud at him. 

“I knew in the first five minutes,” Teddy Q said. He wasn’t outright laughing, but he was sure as hell smirking. 

Vasquez was clearly enjoying it, too. “I’ve known them less than a day, and I figured it out.” 

“Well, congratulations to all of you!” Faraday threw his hands up in the air, absolutely done with all of them. “Screw y’all, I’m walking to Rose Creek!” 

“Oh, cheer up, _guero_ ,” Vasquez said with a laugh, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll sit in the back with you in the Lancer. I’ll even let you have the gunner seat.” 

Faraday could’ve wished that the promise of taking the turret gun didn’t mollify him, but it did. “Fine,” he grumbled, still pouting. “Nobody tells me anything.” 

“If everyone is done acting like a pack of children now…” Sam pointed toward the path to Liar’s Berg and its Catch-a-Ride. His point made, he started walking again, and the others followed. 

Rose Creek awaited.

* * *

It was a long drive to the Highlands from the Frozen Wastes, long enough that eventually they had to stop and sleep. There were no towns any good for finding beds to let on their route, so sleeping meant making camp. They managed to get far enough out of the Waste that sleeping outside wasn’t so bad. The temperature was comfortable, the vehicles could be set up to make a good windbreak, Faraday set a couple turrets that could take out any animals that got ideas about approaching (or at least wake them all up to deal with the trouble), and Emma pulled out her bag of tricks for the first time in front of everyone to make beds for them all.

Most of the crew had never seen a Siren work before, even if they were aware of them, and the ones who had still hadn’t ever seen a Siren who could do exactly _this_. With a little concentration, a blue-purple glow emanated from Emma’s left hand. The parts of her tattoos that were visible were glowing, too, and as the glow grew stronger, green shoots pushed up from the hard ground. First one, then another, then more, then hundreds, until finally there were six soft beds of thick grass to sleep on – one of them double-wide, which made Billy snicker at Faraday all over again. Faraday flipped him off, but without much feeling behind it; it had been a long damn day, and he was ready to hit the—

Faraday laughed out loud at his own joke before he’d even said it. “Hey, we’re literally hitting the hay!” 

There was a mix of groans and giggles at that, depending on where on the exhausted/punchy scale the rest of them were. Faraday was equally pleased with both responses, and then even more pleased as he flopped down on his personal patch of grass. “Damn, this is comfy as hell!” 

It actually made Emma smile a little, and she hadn’t felt much like smiling in these days since her husband was killed. She was feeling just a little less alone, and that helped more than she might have expected. 

“Early start tomorrow,” Sam reminded everyone, but mostly Faraday. Soon they’d all settled down, taking to their beds of soft grass. With all the walking and driving they’d done over the course of the day, it didn’t take long to fall asleep, especially with something so close to a real bed to sleep on. 

The sunrise started waking them, and as experienced travelers, they all stepped in to take up the tasks of the morning. Vasquez started the coffee, Goodnight pulled trail rations together into breakfast, Faraday recalled his turrets—their little camp got busy quickly, busy enough that they didn’t notice Jack Horne’s approach until he was practically on top of them, startling Teddy and hissing a “shhhh!” at them all as he quickly flashed his hand through the trail signs that meant “trouble over there” and pointed just past the Lancer.

“Been trackin’ ya,” Horne whispered, and none of them were sure if he meant himself or whatever he was pointing at. 

At first, it seemed like he might not actually be pointing at anything at all. There was nothing there to see, to most of them. Billy was the only one who wasn’t entertaining the notion that Jack Horne was even crazier than they thought, because his bionic eye could see exactly what Jack was pointing at. He drew one of his pistols, aiming it seemingly at nothing. 

“Assassin droid,” Billy said, and then all the rest of them got to see what he was looking at. Right in the spot where Horne had pointed, a tall, slim humanoid in a full-face helmet and a brown-and-buff racer’s suit materialized. He might have passed for a human on the way to a Death Race, if not for the fact that he appeared to have only four fingers on each hand. 

Vasquez drew a pistol from his hip, Goodnight whipped the rifle from his back and headed for higher ground, while Faraday pulled an assault rifle and ducked behind the Technical for cover. 

“Please tell me I am hallucinating,” Goodnight murmured, because a hallucination would be a vast improvement on the terror that this assassin had come for Billy. It had happened before, and Billy had barely survived it. Assassin droids had the same set of skills Billy did, and they presented a lot more of a challenge than most trouble that came their way. 

Faraday had never seen anything like the being in front of them, but he’d heard enough stories to be appropriately concerned. “If you’re hallucinating, so am I,” he said, just a little louder than Goodnight. 

Horne was drawn as well, and Emma, but Sam just carefully and obviously set the gun he’d already drawn on the ground in front of him. 

“Hold your fire,” Sam quietly advised, because he was getting ideas. Most of the time, he’d assume an assassin droid was out to kill. That was what they were built to do, after all. But if this droid meant to kill them, they could’ve done it twice over already. Since they hadn’t, they must want something else, and Sam was curious about what. He stepped up slowly, no sudden movements, handed his other gun off to Vasquez, and made his play. 

“Hey there.” Sam kept coming closer, slow and steady. “You looking for someone?” 

A set of symbols flashed up on the face of the droid’s helmet in glowing red, and it took Sam a moment to realize that it was a “shrug” emoticon. Well, that was one way of communicating with no visible face, Sam supposed. 

“I seek a challenge.” The droid’s voice was clearly electronically produced, but it wasn’t the kind of flat, emotionless affect of a Loader-Bot. (A male voice? Maybe, but Sam still figured he wasn’t going to know how to refer to the droid until he asked). The droid spoke with a more human tone than the average bot, and thankfully not with the grating enthusiasm of a CL4P-TR4P unit. 

It wasn’t the answer Sam had been expecting, but upon further reflection, he realized he couldn’t have said what he _did_ expect. What it was, was an answer that solidified an idea that had been building ever since the assassin droid had walked up and didn’t start shooting. 

“Who d’you work for?” Sam asked. Assassin droids all worked for somebody. They were constructed to serve their employers, usually someone very wealthy or powerful who had political or business enemies they wanted dead. As with most artificial intelligences created to have sharp, swift judgment and take clever approaches to problem-solving, though, assassin droids ran a high risk of going self-aware. If that happened, they suddenly became very hard for any person or corporation to keep, no matter how powerful they were. 

“I work for myself,” the droid replied, and another emoticon flashed up on his helmet’s screen: eyes and a flat line for a mouth. Unimpressed with Sam’s question, apparently, but not too upset about it. He could work with that. 

“We’re headed for about the biggest challenge there is,” Sam said. “Liberating a town, saving it from the men who’d steal it, and knocking Hyperion out of the sky again.”  
A new emoticon appeared: one eye large, one eye small, and a little dot nose in the middle. Raising an eyebrow at him, then? Sam read it as interest and went on. “It’s an impossible job, and probably we’re all gonna die. Care to join us?” 

The latest emoticon to appear was just the one Sam was hoping to see: a grin. A little unsettling in its glowing red on the face of an assassin, and perhaps more unsettling given that it came in response to ‘we’re all gonna die,’ but it meant they had another gun, and that was something they desperately needed. 

The droid bowed, apparently programmed for formality before cutting loose from his past – or maybe that was their own decision. “I will join you. Call me Red Harvest.” 

“Pleased to meet you, Red Harvest,” Sam said, and bowed in return. “C’mon and meet the others, we were just fixing to roll out.” 

And thus the five became seven, and their path was set.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the Corporate Wars: Borderlands lore is pretty sparse on what actually went down, and if the timeline has ever been nailed down, I haven't seen it - and I'm not looking too hard, because it works much better if I can just make them be when I need them to be for the sake of this story. 
> 
> Regarding Sirens: In Borderlands canon, they all have slightly different powers, so I decided to run with making up some new ones for Emma. 
> 
> Regarding Sexism and Homophobia: They exist in the Borderlands world, but certainly not to the degree that they do in 19th century America, so we're gonna let the women have a little more to do, and we're gonna let the queer fam be as queer as we want wherever we want. 
> 
> Regarding Vasquez and Car Games: Here's the song that came on the radio and Vasquez insisted everyone needed to sing along with, which I first heard in Tales from the Borderlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8ofhjI6ODc As for "My Skags," here's how you play: look out the window. Do you see any skags? Yell "my skags!" Those six skags you just saw out the window have become part of your herd, because you claimed them before anyone else. Whoever's claimed the most skags at the end of the ride wins. 
> 
> Regarding the Sacred Pandoran Tradition of Shotgun: I just thought it was funny.
> 
> Regarding Red Harvest, Assassin Droid: His abilities and look are based on the Borderlands character Zer0, because there just aren't any human or even quasi-human natives of Pandora.


	3. Welcome to Rose Creek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the first Battle of Rose Creek is fought. CW: PTSD

As they rolled into the Highlands, the scenery changed before their eyes. The arid desert gave way to patches of greenery, the mountains separated by rivers and lakes that hadn’t been pumped dry or dammed off into nothing. The skags and spiderants that had periodically harassed their vehicles were slowly replaced with needle-hurling stalkers that Billy and Red Harvest entertained themselves with spotting and shooting in the head, and carnivorous threshers that Emma withered to nothing with a wave of her hand. 

“Those _culeros_ are plants?” Vasquez asked after watching her put down a few. He’d seen threshers before, but had always assumed that anything that hungry for flesh was definitely an animal. 

Emma nodded – she’d grown quieter the closer they got to Rose Creek. “They’re good for the soil,” she said absently, looking out the window. “Keep it aerated.” 

“Huh.” Faraday was surprised by the information, too – and by the fact that apparently threshers were good for something other than eating anything in their path and spitting acid at people, pets, and brand new paint jobs. 

In the Technical, Teddy was taking a turn in the gunner’s chair, with Jack coaching him from the other rear seat. Teddy had fired a gun before – anybody who grew up on Pandora could at the very least blast a skag with a shotgun – but turrets were new. Firing from a moving location was new, too. Teddy found the expert advice from below comforting; even if he wasn’t actually shooting any better (he might be or he might not, he really wasn’t sure), he was at least beginning to feel confident that despite how _odd_ the men they’d hired were, they for sure knew what they were doing. 

Red Harvest followed behind in a one-man Racer that shared the same “shades of brown with a splash of red” color palette as his jumpsuit. “He,” the others had learned during the brief conversation at their campsite, was the appropriate choice of pronouns. Other than that, they largely weren’t sure what to make of him at all. He was willing to join up, though, and Sam seemed to think it was a good idea, and if there was one pair of things that they could all agree on, it was that they needed all the help they could get and that Sam was definitely the best decision-maker of the lot. 

Early afternoon, the green around them got even greener. Sam glanced over to Emma sitting next to him. “This your handiwork?” At her nod, he started looking for an easy place to leave the vehicles. He wanted the men currently occupying Rose Creek to be the surprised ones, not his crew – that meant a quieter approach than rolling into the middle of town with three armed vehicles. 

Once he had everyone stopped, Sam laid out the plan. They already knew from Emma the general layout of the town and how many of the enemy they were likely to face. Now it was time to set out their first moves. 

“Billy, any objections to playing Cyborg Lackey for a minute before you get to cut loose and start killing bandits?” Sam asked. 

Billy snorted. “Done it plenty of times.” 

“Excellent. You and I are gonna walk straight into the middle of town and be a big distraction they can’t look away from. Our job is to look like we think we’re badasses but we’re too dumb to know when we’re outgunned.” 

Vasquez nodded thoughtfully. “So you’re going to pretend to be Faraday.” 

“Jackass,” Faraday said with a snort. “Also, I am the baddest badass on this whole side of the planet, and being outgunned is why turrets exist.” 

Sam wasn’t particularly interested in Faraday and Vasquez’s continued bickering, which he’d been a captive audience to for the past several hours of driving. “Faraday, I want you coming in from the buildings to the west, and Vasquez, you do the same from the east – both of you behind me and Billy, and you stay out of sight until you get the signal. Vasquez, Horne, you two are gonna do the same from the other side of the settlement. Horne east, Vasquez west – I want to make sure when Horne and Faraday start putting down turrets, we’ve got them covered on all sides. Red, Goody, you two are going for the rooftops. Emma says they keep a sniper on the west side roof, on top of the bank – Red, I want you to take him out without anybody on the ground noticing. They need to think they’ve still got cover.” 

“What about us?” Teddy asked. 

“Jack had you practicing on the turret on the way in, right?” Sam asked. “Let’s put you in the Technical at the south road – if any of them get smart enough to make a run for it that way, you wipe ‘em out. I don’t want anybody left at the end of this but Rose Creek’s no-account sellout Sheriff. And Mrs. Cullen, I know you’re not gonna like this, but I want you out of sight and out of the way.” 

“Why?” Emma didn’t like it, no, but she wasn’t unreasonable. If Sam had a good explanation for her, she’d accept it. 

“Because based on the fact that they didn’t try to kidnap you when they first rolled into town, I’m pretty sure that right now, they don’t know there’s a Siren here,” Sam said. “This fight, they’ve only got triple our numbers. Any one of us has taken on odds like that a hundred times, and we can handle it without you. The fight we’ve got coming after that…” He knew he didn’t have to say it to make it clear: they were going to be not just outnumbered, but massively outnumbered. When Bogue knew they’d sent his band of hired bandits packing off to the next life, he was going to bring all his resources to bear, and they were going to be in for a world of hurt even if they pulled off a victory. “We’re going to need every advantage we can get there, and a surprise Siren is a damn good advantage.” 

That was fair enough, so Emma didn’t argue. “I’ll hide out in the Lancer.” 

“Perfect.” Sam took a look around at his little army, looking to see if anyone had any questions. He didn’t see or hear any, so he moved on to lay out the rest of the plan. “After you all are in place, Billy and I are going to stroll into the middle of town. We’ll offer our terms like gentlemen: get the hell out of town, tell your boss to leave it alone and take his spaceship somewhere it’s wanted, and then we don’t have to kill too many of you. They’re not gonna take the offer, but we’re gonna make it just the same. My guess is they’re gonna laugh at me. I’m gonna say ‘all right’ to that, and that’s y’all’s cue to move on out where they can see you and let ‘em know what they’re dealing with. That’s their second chance to walk away. They’re not gonna take that, either, and when they don’t, Red, you let ‘em know they don’t have sniper cover.” 

A heart emoticon popped up on Red’s helmet. Apparently the droid’s tendency toward unemotional silence didn’t preclude a taste for the dramatic. 

“That when the shooting starts?” Faraday asked. 

“That’s when the shooting starts,” Sam confirmed. “Because what Red’s gonna be doing is giving them their third and final chance to walk away, which they’re also not gonna take. They’re gonna draw, and we’re gonna clear ‘em out.” 

Faraday let out a childlike whoop of joy. He also had a taste for the dramatic, and for outshooting no-good bandits, so this was really the best of both worlds. “Then let’s get going!” 

Getting everyone in position took a little time, especially for some of the slower members of their party less accustomed to stealth work. They all got there without alerting the enemy, though, and were ready to play their parts when Billy and Sam walked up to start playing theirs. They watched as the whole setup went down more or less exactly as Sam had predicted – apparently his skills included “bandit psychology expert.” Red dropped the sniper’s body with a glowing grin emoticon on his helmet, and the first bandit pulled his gun, and then, as planned, the shooting started. 

Faraday threw down his first turret to his left and pulled an assault rifle with his right, a bright purple Jakobs with “Ethel” etched on the side in shining green script. On the other side of the town, Horne was doing much the same – one turret down, and while it took care of business on its own, he started sighting men down his rifle and taking them out one by one. A few feet away, Vasquez and his pair of pistols were sliding through the bandits with brutal efficiency: find cover, shoot, move to new cover, shoot, and so on, killing three bandits in the space of less than a minute while they were still trying to figure out exactly where he was. 

Billy and his glowing blue knives were whirling through the edge of the battlefield, cutting down bandits as they came out of the buildings they’d taken over to join the fray. He threw some knives, stabbed with others, and didn’t even go for his pistols until he’d run out of blades. Above him, Red Harvest removed a few more of the enemy from play with a sniper rifle before jumping down into the middle of them all with a glowing red sword drawn. It appeared to be the same sort of technology as Billy’s knives, cutting through bandit armor like hot butter, disappearing when it wasn’t in use. 

Sam showed the same speed and courage as he had back in the bar in Sanctuary. His pair of pistols was as deadly as any, and he seemed to share Vasquez’s skill for finding good cover and shooting around the cover others tried to use. Where Jack Horne fought like a berserker, roaring and firing and occasionally flinging an axe, Sam was calm and methodical and silent, terrifying in his brains rather than his brutality. 

And up above, Goodnight Robicheaux froze. 

It didn’t always happen. Sometimes he could get through gunfire and explosions with no trouble. If Hyperion had sent bots instead of bandits to occupy Rose Creek, Goodnight probably would have been just fine, shooting out their main sensors without so much as a flinch. But these were men. Men who’d come from somewhere, men who had families, men who had futures, even if they’d chosen to do wicked things with them. They were _people_ , and when Goodnight sighted down his scope, he could see their faces. It made something clench up inside him, made the gunfire louder, made the screams of pain rattle him down to his bones, until he wasn’t in Rose Creek anymore. His body was, but his mind had taken a slingshot ride back to a trench on Hermes twenty years ago, straining for air in the thin, helium-soaked atmosphere, surrounded by the cries of the dying and the blood of the dead. The cold light of the planet’s blue star made the dead look somehow _more_ dead, pallid and waxy like they were already embalmed for burial. He looked through his scope, and he didn’t see a bandit – he saw a young woman in an Atlas uniform, no older than twenty, and saw her pretty face disappear into blood and bone, a bullet between her eyes. A bullet he’d put there, and why? Because she’d taken a contract from a different weapons manufacturer than he had? 

Goodnight gasped for air, hissed it back out, trying desperately to put himself back into reality. He didn’t get any further than realizing he was on high ground, exposed, and he needed to get to cover. There wasn’t any on top of the building, but there was a ladder, and he scrambled down it as fast as he could and pulled his rifle again, even though he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if he killed another person, it would be the end of him as well. He had killed more than his share, too many, and if he took even one more life, it wouldn’t matter how much money was in his New-U account: he would die. Permanently. He didn’t want to die, not now, not when he still had so much to live for. 

So when he saw the chief badass of the bandits leap into the Racer that was parked behind the general store no more than thirty feet in front of him, Goodnight didn’t shoot him. He knew he needed to. He looked through his scope and he could see the bandit’s head clear as text on a page. All he’d have to do was pull the trigger, and Sam’s plan would have officially gone off without a hitch. 

“Take the shot.” 

The voice was Faraday’s. Goodnight hadn’t even heard him approach behind him. 

“Take the shot,” he said again, and Goodnight still couldn’t make himself pull the trigger. He didn’t want to die. 

“Take the damn shot!” 

Goodnight wanted to. He wanted to be brave and self-sacrificing. He used to be, he knew. He’d put his life on the line for home and family once. He couldn’t say when he’d become so selfish, when he’d started putting his own life ahead of others, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. It didn’t even occur to him that his fear was irrational. 

The Racer was quickly out of range, and Goodnight was coming back to himself, starting to get clear on where and when he was. Faraday was saying something, but Goodnight couldn’t process anything beyond the exasperated tone until Billy walked up. Just the sight of Billy helped ground him, made the air stop burning his lungs. 

“Give it here,” Billy said, holding out his hand, and Goodnight numbly handed him the rifle. Billy looked at it, examining it, and then pointed an expressionless look at Faraday as he handed it back. “It’s jammed.” 

Contrary to popular belief, sometimes Faraday was smart enough to know not to argue. He didn’t believe for a minute that the rifle was actually jammed. He also didn’t believe that Billy would hesitate to lodge a knife in his eye if he pushed the issue, though, so he walked away and left the two men to each other. 

Out in the street, Emma and Teddy had come running into their town, calling for the people to come out from the homes and businesses they were hiding inside. They had to hear Emma’s voice several times before believing they were safe to emerge. Slowly but surely, they did – trickling out a few at a time, men, women, and children. 

So this, Sam Chisolm thought, was his army. Six seasoned fighters, and a mob of farmers, miners, and storekeepers who’d never shot at anything that wasn’t trying to eat their sheep. And he had just a few days to turn that mob into something that could take on the full force of whatever Bogue decided to throw at them. 

“’least it won’t be moonshots,” he muttered under his breath, thankful for small favors, and got on about the next bit of his business: the Sheriff. 

The man who’d sold out his settlement was hiding under a porch. He looked accordingly ashamed of himself as Sam ordered him to come out. That look shifted quickly back into scared as Sam started giving him his orders. 

“You’re about to get yourself a ride up to visit your boss on his ship,” Sam said flatly. “You’re gonna walk out to the Catch-a-Ride, drive yourself to the Fast Travel at the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, and you’re gonna get a meeting with Bogue on the Hades. When you get there, you’re gonna tell him that we’re taking back Rose Creek and we’re taking back Pandora, and if he’s not willing to let us then he’d better come down here himself, and he’s a coward if he doesn’t.” 

The sheriff’s eyes widened. He’d seen what happened to the last person who’d insulted Bogue. 

“And then,” Sam calmly continued, “you’re gonna tell him that this message comes from Sam Chisolm, from Fyrestone settlement. Repeat that.” 

“Sam Chisolm,” the sheriff stammered out. “From Fyrestone.” 

“Like the jet fuel,” Sam said with an approving nod. 

“Like the jet fuel.” 

“Good. Now go.” 

The sheriff didn’t wait around after getting his orders. He took off as fast as his legs would carry him, trying to make sure nobody got a chance to change their mind about shooting him. As he ran, the people of the town began to gather around Sam and his assembled associates. Time to see how much of an army he was even going to get.  
Sam looked around at the sea of faces, their expressions ranging from anxious to determined and hitting every note in between. Some would stay and fight, he expected. Some would leave. Some would stay and then hide when the fighting started. What he said to them now would do a lot to decide how those numbers fell out. 

“We used to think Hyperion was unbeatable,” he said. As he spoke, he took the time to make eye contact with each member of the crowd in turn. “This planet was under Handsome Jack’s yoke for years, with all of us either too scared or too busy fighting each other to fight back. But you know what? Even with the whole Hyperion corporation, a space station, and the Warrior backing him up, he still got beat. We got our planet back. Bogue has more resources than we do, more men and more guns, a star destroyer, and a whole slew of bots…but I still think we can beat him. We will lose things and lose people in the process, but if we take the three days we have to prepare the right way, I think we can do it.” 

“Three days?” The question came from Leni Frankel, a dark-haired woman who took in mending and laundry. “Bogue told us two weeks before he came back, and that was just a week ago!” 

“That was before we took his town back,” Sam said. “Sheriff should be delivering the news tomorrow morning. One day for Bogue to assemble whatever forces he’s planning to bring, and one for him to get them here. Counting what we’ve got left of this one…three days.” 

It wasn’t much time. It wasn’t _enough_ time. It was what time they had, though, so it would have to do. 

“Any of you who want to get out before he gets here, you’ll get no judgment from me,” Sam went on. “This fight will be hard, and not everyone’s cut out for fighting, even on Pandora. But any of you who’re willing to stay and fight for your land and your planet, we’ll use the next three days to train you up good as we can for it. I’ve got some surprises in mind for Bogue that I could use your help with, as well.” He looked around at the people, satisfied that he’d given them all something to think about, and gave a decisive nod. “You make up your minds, and I’ll see whoever’s staying in one hour in the town hall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the Condensed Battle Timeline: Travel takes a lot longer in 19th century American than it does in the vaguely-located-in-time Space Future. Even with stalling and deliberately hobbling the Borderlands canon travel systems, I could only push it but so far. So, we're going a little faster through some plot points.


	4. Night Falls, Day Breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they prepare for the battle ahead.

One hour after Sam had made his speech, he had all the adults who were staying gathered in the town hall, much as they’d been before Bogue and his men appeared. He started by getting an idea of what skills were currently available in the people of the town, and started dividing them up into groups for what he thought they could learn. Goodnight would try to turn some of them into long-range riflemen, and Billy would show some others how to wield knives. Horne and Vasquez would start mapping out fortifications – trenches and traps, mines and bombs, turrets, anything that could help them control the field. The townspeople who confessed to not having even the first bit of aim were assigned to them, because anybody could use a shovel and shotgun, and they’d do best with the if they were involved from the planning stages. Red Harvest would be scouting a wide perimeter around the town, just in case Bogue acted faster than Sam thought he could, or if he tried another round of deploying local bandits. 

As the preparations began, Sam had his own task: acquiring a whole caravan full of explosives from the nearby eridium mine. He got the town’s van from the garage, and Emma rode shotgun beside him once again as he took the path up the mountain to the mine. 

“You really think we can do this?” Emma asked. It was the first expression of doubt Sam had heard from her. 

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have taken the job,” he said. “It won’t be easy, and I expect we’re gonna see some good men die…but I think we’ll see an evil man die at the end of it, and you’ll get your home back.” 

Emma appreciated both optimism and the realism of the statement. The acknowledgment of the difficulty and the losses they were likely to face was somehow more comforting than mere encouragement would have been. 

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For all this. We couldn’t, without you and your friends. We couldn’t have even started.”

“Guess there’s still enough of the old Crimson Raider in me to think fighting for a free Pandora is my job,” Sam mildly replied. There was more to it than that, but he wasn’t saying any of it. Instead, he backed the van up to the mine and parked it. “C’mon, let’s get some dynamite.”

* * *

The seven met for dinner at the hotel that night, getting to know each other a little further and, for many of them, having the first decent meal they’d eaten in days. At first, they were too busy scarfing down food to notice that every time another resident of the town walked by, they’d have another set of eyes on them.

“Feel like I’m in the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve,” Faraday remarked. 

It got a snort out of Goodnight, who took a drink of the whiskey from a crystal glass. “Fame is a sarcophagus,” he said dryly. 

For a second, Faraday just stared at him. “Do you get those from a book, or are you just making ‘em up as you go?” 

Goodnight and Billy both tried not to smirk, Billy only slightly more successful than Goodnight. “I’ll try to use one-syllable words from now on,” Goodnight said. 

Faraday knew he was being made fun of, or at least he was pretty sure he was. Even so, curiosity was strong. 

“What’s a syllable?” 

A few seats over, Horne looked at Red Harvest with undisguised curiosity. “So where’d you come from, anyway?” 

“Tediore,” he said. That wasn’t a planet. It was a manufacturer of guns that instead of reloading in a standard manner, turned into grenades and were promptly replaced by an identical gun via holoprinting technology. 

Vasquez couldn’t help his laugh when he overheard the answer. “Guess we better make sure you don’t run out of ammo, eh? Don’t want you exploding on us.”

A scowling emoticon appeared on Red Harvest’s helmet. 

“Sorry, sorry…” Vasquez held his hands up. “I didn’t know that was going to be rude. I never met an android before.” 

“There are few of us,” Red Harvest acknowledged. “Fewer still who are not owned and go where they like. I know of only one other on Pandora.” 

“Is that lonely?” Vasquez asked. Most of this crew were loners in one way or another – traveling alone, working alone, fighting alone – but they all saw other humans pretty regularly. He couldn’t imagine knowing he was one of only two of his kind on the whole planet.

Red Harvest’s shrug emoticon appeared once more. Horne narrowed his eyes and leaned forward a little, and found that he still couldn’t decipher it. “What, um…what’re those…” He gestured vaguely at Red Harvest’s helmet. “…things? You got a face under there?” 

“Face?” The puzzled eyebrow-raise emoticon replaced the shrug. 

Nonplussed, Horne sat back again. “Guess not.” 

Across the table, Faraday and Goodnight had gotten into it over vocabulary again, and Sam appeared to be trying to eat every potato on the planet. Horne was still making that face, and Vasquez was laughing, who even knew at what. 

“Humans,” Red Harvest said, “are weird.”

* * *

Day broke, and the preparations began in earnest.

“Knives are easy,” Billy said, because knives had always been easy for him. Long before he became a cybernetics experiment, an assassin, or a drifter, knives had been easy. He didn’t remember it, since the experiments had wiped so much of his early memory, but he’d learned to throw knives when he was just a child, busking with his sister in the square of a big city on Isolus. All he could remember was knives coming naturally. 

He had two Loader-Bots with no AI programmed in serving as his practice and demonstration dummies. “Like this,” he said, stabbing one in the side, then the other on its foot. “And then this—” A slice across one bot’s throat, a stab through the eye on the other. “And this.” He vanished from view, then reappeared four seconds later about twenty yards away, where he threw a knife from each hand to lodge in each of the bots’ backs with deadly force. 

“See? Easy.” 

For a moment, the townsfolk who’d been assigned to him just stood and stared. There was no way, no way in this world or any other, that they could possibly do what he had just done. Not in three days. Not in three _years_. If that was what he thought was easy, heaven help them when they got to something he thought was hard. There wasn’t even any point in trying. 

Almost as one, the group turned to walk away and find some other way to make themselves useful. 

“Hey, wait! Where are you going?” Billy shouted, irritated with the abrupt giving up. In seconds, they were all gone. 

All but one: Leni Frankel, the seamstress and laundry woman, stood with her arms crossed and her eyes focused on the dummies. “Show me again,” she said. “But slower.”

A faint smile came to Billy’s lips. At least one person in this town wasn't useless.

* * *

“Again!” Goodnight’s head fell back to look up at the sky in pure frustration. “Creator give me strength,” he muttered, more to himself than any god. He hadn’t believed in any of the religion he’d been raised with in a long time, but expressions of exasperation lingered even where faith had failed.

The men lined up behind the crates grimaced and sighted down their rifles at the completely stationary electronic targets in the distance. So far, not one of them had been hit, and they’d been working for two full hours. Goodnight, who’d started out a friendly and encouraging instructor, had grown more agitated with every shot. 

They fired again, and still all the targets remained. 

“For the love of—” Goodnight took a deep breath, trying to ground himself, and then lost it again when he saw one of his students _looking down the damn barrel of his gun_. “Are you out of your goddamn mind!? If I wasn’t sure from y’all’s shooting that you were already blind, I’d think you were trying to make it so!” He wished he had something to throw, but he didn’t, so he settled for furiously waving his hands as he started yelling once more. “ _AGAIN_! And for the love of whatever you hold sacred, _focus_ this time! Sight, _then_ breathe, _hold_ steady, pull _gently_ on the trigger, and _fire_!”

They fired. No hits. Another man started to look at the end of his gun. 

“Do _not_!” Goodnight shouted, half a snarl. “Do _not_ point your weapon at anything you do not intend to destroy! At the targets, _again_! Keep your mind on the target and act like you give a damn! You have to _hate_ what you’re firing at!” 

Faraday had come up around halfway through the second rant, starting to feel a little bad for the men Goodnight was berating. Having personally been embarrassed by Goodnight at dinner the evening before, Faraday felt like he’d found a good opportunity to get a win for himself. 

“Gentlemen, do you know who this is?” he loudly asked. Faraday strolled up closer, easily taking a rifle from the man on the end as he walked up to Goodnight. “This is Goodnight Robicheaux! Hero of the Corporate Wars, dubbed the Angel of Death by comrades and enemies alike! Three hundred and fifty confirmed kills on Hermes, Athenas, and Elpis! Show some damn respect!” 

Goodnight eyed Faraday warily. He didn’t know where this was going, but he was sure he didn’t like it. The grin Faraday gave as he held the rifle out just clinched it. 

“I think they need some inspiration,” Faraday said. “Why don’t you show ‘em how a legend does it?” His smile faded, and his voice lowered. “Or is a legend all you are?” 

Goodnight was looking at Faraday like he might want to shoot him. Very briefly, Faraday wondered if handing the man a weapon at this moment had actually been an incredibly bad idea. He’d seen Goodnight freeze up, and he’d been concerned from that moment that the man would be more of a liability than an asset, but it might’ve just been a fluke. Faraday considered for a moment that he might be about to get the barrel of that gun pressed to his forehead. 

Before he could get good and worried, though, Goodnight whirled around to face the targets. They were a hundred yards away, ten of them, all shiny blue holo-prints shaped like faceless men. 

One went down. 

Two. Three. Four. 

It was a Jakobs rifle, which meant it wasn’t anything fancy, but it fired as fast as Goodnight could pull the trigger, and that was _fast_. 

Five. Six. All six had come in right between the eyes. 

Reload. 

Seven. Eight. Firing bullets and sweating bullets. 

Nine. Ten. 

And then shoving the rifle back into Faraday’s hands as all the targets dissolved and reset. He stalked away, anxious and furious in equal parts, having decided that Faraday could take over the damn shooting lessons. As Goodnight left, a murmur rose from one of the men watching.

“He didn’t even use the scope.”

* * *

In the center of town, Sam, Horne, and Emma were using a combination of crates, vehicles, furniture, carts, and Emma’s plants to reduce the available options for entering the town. All Emma needed to start a plant growing was the idea of one. It would go easier from a seed, but as long as she occasionally stopped for food and water, she could keep growing cryovines larger and larger to turn potential entrances into ice-traps. Horne was directing townsfolk in setting the mines accordingly. He was a strange one, but Sam had been right about his head for battlefield strategy. And unlike Goodnight and Billy, he wasn’t struggling with his students at all. He was unfailingly kind and patient as he taught folks to set mines, demonstrated appropriate shotgun range, and explained why he was placing certain defenses in certain places. Sam chimed in where appropriate, and if Horne did a little more quoting from the Holy Book of the Church of the Vault than anybody was really comfortable with, well, at least he wasn’t one of those Children of Helios nuts.

By mid-afternoon, they were all working together, figuring out the broader defenses outside of the town proper. Goodnight, it turned out, knew how to use a locator and level for mapping out the trenches they meant to hide men and detonators in. He helped with the digging until they were about three feet down, when Billy noticed he was starting to glance around nervously and told him they ought to go help make ammunition. 

Vasquez and Faraday were working together on placing explosives. Jack and Sam had told them where; they were just following orders, which had Faraday cracking jokes about the two of them being glorified Loader-Bots. Vasquez laughed easily at all of them – say what you would about Joshua Faraday, the man was funny. And he had pretty green eyes, but there wasn’t any time to be concerning himself with that now. Maybe later, if they weren’t all dead tomorrow. 

Then Faraday lit a cigarette while handling firebombs, and Vasquez started to question his own judgment almost as much as he was questioning Faraday’s.

“Smoking seems like a good idea to you right now, _guero_?” Vasquez asked pointedly. Faraday gave him a look like a puzzled skag pup, and Vasquez pointed at the box he was carrying. “Firebombs?” 

Then it clicked, and in what they were all learning was classic Faraday fashion, Faraday decided to flick the cigarette at Vasquez and his box of bombs instead of just dropping it and grinding it out. 

“ _Pendejo_!” Vasquez laughed and stomped on the cigarette, then kicked a clump of dirt at Faraday. He was an idiot, but…yeah, maybe later.

* * *

Night fell, and there was no more that most of them could do – Red Harvest went off to scout, but the rest of them would be at loose ends until they had word that Bogue was coming. Faraday was of course the one who suggested heading to the saloon for a poker game, and then the drinking got started. Odds were good that they were going to die the next day, after all. Might as well have one last enjoyable night. Besides, they were all sort of starting to like each other.

The whiskey got to flowing, and then the stories. Goodnight didn’t talk about the Corporate Wars, but he had a number of good stories from his adventures with Billy. The two of them were sharing a cigarette again, with Goodnight drinking too much and Billy refusing any glass that was offered to him. Billy knew the difference between Goodnight having a few drinks for fun and Goodnight knocking them back in an effort to shut his brain up, and it always worried him a little. 

Sam was telling them all about when he’d first met Jack Horne, when Jack was a seasoned commando and he was a brand-new recruit to what was then the Crimson Lance. It was a story Goodnight had heard before, making it feel like he finally had an opportunity to seek some reassurance from Billy. 

“I had the dream again last night,” he whispered, leaning in close so Billy could hear him. “With the owl.” 

“They’re just dreams, Goody,” Billy gently replied. “There aren’t any owls on Pandora.” 

“Billy…” Billy was right. Somewhere in his head, Goodnight knew that. Billy was being smart and rational. But since that first fight here in Rose Creek, Goodnight had been having a harder time than ever being rational. “I saw it, Billy. I heard it. If I pull that trigger in violence again, I’m a dead man.” 

Not for the first time, Billy considered whether they should even be here at all. Before Sam Chisolm’s men had found them, Billy had begun to think of retirement. They’d made plenty of money in their time, and the life they lived was getting harder on Goody every passing year. They could take what they had, buy a place somewhere nice and warm, and spend the rest of their days enjoying each other’s company and being boring old men whose names nobody cared about. 

But it was Hyperion. Hyperion had destroyed his family, stolen his memory, and made an experimental killer out of him. Billy couldn’t walk away from an opportunity to kick them back off Pandora, and Billy didn’t think they were going to die tomorrow. He genuinely believed that they were going to win, and that retirement would still be waiting for them after one last fight. 

“You’ll be fine, Goody,” Billy insisted quietly. He lit another cigarette laced with the drug that helped with Goody’s nerves and the pain from Billy’s cybernetics and took just a short drag before passing it over. “You know what happens if either of us dies. We’ll regenerate at the last New-U and get right back to living.” Billy had seen to that after the very first time he’d nearly lost Goody. He didn’t want any more _I love yous_ that only came up because Goody thought he was about to die. 

“I won’t.” Goodnight stubbornly shook his head, even as he took the cigarette and inhaled deeply. He wanted to silence his worries. He wanted to believe Billy was right. He just couldn’t. “I won’t. Not if I kill another man.” 

He might have worried more, but Leni Frankel had approached the table and attention was shifting around. Goodnight could let Billy know how weak he was, but he couldn’t bear to let anyone else see it. 

Leni proved a good distraction – she had mended Jack’s coat, neat as you please, and when Jack said that he’d never asked her to do that, she just primly replied that she’d done it anyway. Billy leaned his shoulder into Goodnight with a smile, nodding toward Leni. “Look at my favorite student.” 

“Your only student,” Goodnight pointed out, but Billy had managed to pull a smile out of him. It was shaky, but it was there. That was always a good start to getting Goodnight steady again. 

“Leni!” Billy gave a grin that was rarely seen by anyone but Goodnight. “Show him what else you can do!” 

At first, some of the others laughed, taking it for a dirty joke. If it had been, Leni would have been both angry and embarrassed. In this case, she beamed like the sun, whipped a knife off her belt, and hurled it hard and fast enough to lodge in the wall right above Faraday’s head. A cheer went up around the table, Faraday looking as delighted as any of them at the show of skill. When Billy could focus all his attention on one student, the results were miraculous. 

Leni was still smiling as she walked over, pulled her knife out of the wall, and went nonchalantly strolling outside. 

“Well?” Sam looked at Jack, who was watching gape-mouthed as Leni left. Sam couldn’t quite tell if he was impressed or horrified, but he had a feeling it was the former. 

“Well what?” 

Vasquez rolled his eyes. “And I thought Faraday was oblivious!” 

Goodnight took pity on the man. “If you’re interested in her, this is your moment to follow and tell her how amazed you are with her knife skills.” 

“Just because that worked for _you_ …” Billy looked at Goodnight with a little smirk, happy to hear him sound more like himself and laugh at Billy’s joke. Maybe the worst was behind them. 

A light appeared to come on in Jack’s head, and he stood from his chair. “Excuse me, boys,” he said, and didn’t pay any attention to the laughter that followed as he made his way out. 

Reminded that women existed, Faraday decided this was the moment to tell the tale of his guns, Ethel and Maria, which then led to Vasquez’s claim of _six_ Marias. Coming from Vasquez, that was almost believable. It was another thing to laugh at, at least, and they all needed the laughs. They knew too well that there wouldn’t be any the next day. 

Eventually, the card game petered out. They’d all either won or lost enough money, and set about getting their last bits of food, drink, or conversation in, slowly spreading out over the saloon. Nobody but Billy noticed when Goodnight slipped upstairs to the room they’d taken and came back down with his bag packed and slung over his shoulder.

He couldn’t do it. He’d tried, and he couldn’t. He wanted to stay for Billy. He wanted to stay for Sam. He wanted to stay for all these people who were working so hard not only to save their town, but to save this whole godsforsaken planet. But he just couldn’t silence his fears, and if he took up sniper position the next day, he was going to be more danger than he was help. He had to go. 

“Goody?” 

Sam Chisolm stood in the darkness, taking in the air and the stars in the sky. He wasn’t waiting for Goodnight on purpose, but he had seen the strain in him these past few days. He wasn’t necessarily surprised to see it, though he’d hoped his old friend would rise above what troubled him. 

“Sam.” Goodnight stopped in his tracks. He’d wanted to do this without having to say any more goodbyes – telling Billy he was leaving had been hard enough. He’d only been able to make himself do that because he’d promised years back that if he needed to run off for a little bit, he’d always tell Billy even if he wasn’t going to let Billy talk him out of it. This time, Billy hadn’t even tried, and it felt like even more punishment for his cowardice. 

“Where ya headed?” Sam asked, like he didn’t know the answer was “anywhere but here.” 

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Goodnight said, because he understood that _where_ wasn’t so much the question Sam wanted to know the answer to as _why_. “I’ve lost my nerve, and I’d be no good to you out there tomorrow. I hear one gunshot wrong and I’ll have my head back on Hermes and I won’t even be able to shoot a bot.” 

“You remember what I told you when we first met?” Sam asked. 

“When I asked why you’d wanna save a piece of Maliwan trash like me?” Goody smiled weakly, and Sam reached out to place a hand on his arm. 

“The war’s over, Goody,” Sam said quietly. “For both of us.” 

“Not for me,” Goodnight said, digging his fingernails into his palm. “I’ve tried to get away from it, but the war follows me everywhere I go, just like that damn owl. It’s beaten me down until I’ve become everything I despised. I’m a coward, Sam.” Saying the words pained him more than trying to press his nails through his own skin did. 

If he stayed, Goodnight knew that Sam would keep trying to convince him that he was better than this, but Goodnight was certain of the truth: he wasn’t. He couldn’t let Sam try anymore. He took a breath, straightened his shoulders, and made his last request to a man he didn’t ever expect to see again. “Please…remember me as I was.” 

Sam watched him walk away, and soon had Faraday and Vasquez joining him in the dim light outside the saloon. “Where’s Goodnight?” Faraday asked. 

“Gone,” Sam replied, with no intention of further explanation. “Where’s Billy?” 

Faraday grimaced and jerked his thumb to the window. “He just started drinkin’.” 

Vasquez followed the gesture with his eyes – as Faraday had said, the cyborg had started drinking. Billy sat on a stool with his arms folded on the bar top and his head hanging low, hair falling out of its knot. A picture of heartbreak, Vasquez thought. Probably the best thing to do was leave him be, let him drown his sorrows. But if Vasquez was any good at leaving well enough alone, he’d still be on Artemis. Besides, he liked Billy, and he didn’t care for watching anyone look so damn miserable. So while the others did the smart thing and walked away, Vasquez went back into the saloon and took the seat next to Billy. “You okay?” he asked.

Billy knocked back another shot and got back to contemplating his own hands, flesh and metal fingers laced together on the bar. “He’ll come back,” he said. Goodnight had always come back before, the other times when things had gotten to be too much for him. He’d go off and hate himself a while, drink himself into oblivion, and when the worst of it passed, he’d come back to Billy and apologize for being such a wreck and collapse gratefully into his arms when Billy quietly promised that he still loved him anyway.  
He’d never done it _before_ a job, though. It had always been after, when the smoke had cleared and the explosions gave way to silence, that Goodnight couldn’t stand the sound of his own thoughts and couldn’t bear the thought of putting Billy through another round of managing his trauma. This was different, and as much as Billy wanted to believe the line he gave Vasquez, Billy was afraid that the results might be different, too. Goodnight might _not_ come back. This could be the end – and as he’d thought more than once, Billy considered that it might be the best thing for Goody. It would break Billy’s heart, but maybe it would make Goodnight get off this rock and get some real help dealing with the things that haunted him. 

Vasquez was quiet while Billy thought all that, watching his face and the way he rubbed his thumb over the metal joint on the other hand. Vasquez didn’t think he’d ever seen Billy fidget before. 

“He’s done this before?” Vasquez asked. 

Billy didn’t answer. The rest of them could certainly tell by now that everything wasn’t all right with Goody, but that didn’t mean Billy was giving them any details. They didn’t understand Goody enough to really be able to get it even if he told them, Billy thought. He didn’t want them thinking that Goody was a coward, though, because he _wasn’t_ , and maybe that was why after a long silence, Billy tried to offer some explanation. 

“Some men are meant for a life like this,” Billy said, his voice low, picking his head up enough to look at the bottles of liquor lined up at the back of the bar. “People like you or me or Faraday, it’s been nothing but bullets and blood since we were born. We never even learned to worry about if it was right or wrong. It’s just life. Then you have people like Sam or Emma – they’re as ruthless as you or me, if they’ve got the right cause. Emma wasn’t raised to this, but she’ll put a bullet through any Hyperion man she can get in her sights tomorrow, and she won’t lose a minute of sleep over it. But Goody…” Billy closed his eyes and sighed. “He’s the best long-range shot I’ve ever seen, but he’d have been happier if he never picked up a gun. You know what he was doing before the Corporate Wars?” 

It was a rhetorical question, one he knew Vasquez didn’t know the answer to. Billy gave the answer himself, letting out a soft laugh. “He was in college on Eden-6. Majoring in Literature, because he doesn’t just love the sound of his own fancy words, he loves everyone’s. The only reason he learned to shoot like he does was because his father worked for Maliwan and he wanted the man to be proud of him for something. If the Corporate Wars could’ve held off a few years, long enough for him to get old enough to know that it didn’t matter what his old man thought, the Angel of Death would probably be teaching poetry to high school kids now, clean and sober and sleeping like a baby.” He never would have met Billy that way, and Billy couldn’t imagine his life without Goody anymore. He didn’t _want_ to imagine it, because he remembered too well how cold and lonely it was before. He loved Goodnight so much, though, that he wished it had all gone that way. Goody’s happiness was more important to Billy than his own was. 

Vasquez watched as Billy lit up a cigarette. He could hear the sadness and the longing in the man’s voice, even though he wouldn’t say clearly how he felt. Vasquez had known they loved each other, had easily noticed the affection between the two men, but he hadn’t realized just how deep those feelings ran. He signaled the bartender wordlessly for two whiskeys – he could use one, and he figured Billy could probably use another, but Vasquez had never heard so many words at once from Billy, and he didn’t want to interrupt. 

Billy took the whiskey when it arrived, taking a sip rather than pounding it back. That was enough to fortify him for the rest of what he wanted to say. “I don’t remember half the people I killed on my own behalf, much less the ones I killed for Hyperion. Not their names, not their faces. I give a damn about maybe ten people in the whole galaxy, and most anyone else I could slit their throats and never think about them after I collected the reward for it. Goody’s different. He has a heart big enough for the whole universe, and every time he killed a man was another cut to his peace of mind. He’s killed a lot of them, and it weighs on him even more now than it used to. Maybe once a month, he gets a full night of sleep without knocking himself out with liquor. And yes, sometimes he gets in the middle of too much gunfire and he freezes up because his head’s gone somewhere else. Sometimes he gets caught in the depression and the anxiety and the guilt, and he runs off for a couple days, but he always comes back. And I don’t care what he says about himself, he’s not a coward. He’s the best man of any of us.” 

It was a different perspective on Goodnight Robicheaux than Vasquez had ever heard before. It was more talking and more emotion out of Billy Rocks than Vasquez had heard in their entire acquaintance thus far, too. Vasquez felt rather honored to have heard it all, despite not sharing Billy’s confidence that Goodnight would return, or at least not that he would return in time to do them any good. He didn’t really think his opinion of things mattered, though—Billy was the one who knew Goodnight best, and the one who was in pain now. 

“Then I look forward to seeing him again,” Vasquez said, and clapped Billy’s shoulder before knocking back his whiskey and getting to his feet. “I’m going to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow, yeah? But you need anything, you call, okay?” 

Billy nodded and finished off his own drink. Vasquez was right – he ought to get some sleep. Drinking wasn’t going to bring Goody back, and neither was staying up all night worrying about him. All he could do was wait and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you haven't noticed, yes, I am lifting dialogue directly from Mag7 and directly from Borderlands when it suits, or when it's too good a line to leave out. 
> 
> Regarding Red Harvest's Face: Maybe he has one under the helmet, maybe he doesn't, but if he does, he's not showing it. That's what he has his old-school text emoticons for. :) <3 ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Regarding Varaday: I wasn't sure if I was going that way when I started writing this, and then they seemed like they'd be fun, so here they are. 
> 
> Regarding New-U: So, this is a bit of Borderlands gameplay mechanic. When your character dies, you regenerate at the last savepoint you passed, while a helpful voice says things like "Enjoy your new body! You don't die until Hyperion says you can!" and such. It doesn't happen for everybody - there are definitely folks who are permanently dead in the Borderlands world. But it may come in handy for some people here. 


	5. See You On The Other Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone is badass.

Mid-morning, Red Harvest’s Racer came flying into town at top speed, sliding into a stop in front of the town hall that had been converted into a war room. 

“They are coming!” he called. No emoticons this time, just three exclamation points flashing repeatedly. “They are coming!” 

Sam was running to him, while others began running to take their assigned positions as the word spread like ash in the wind. “What direction? How many?” 

“From the north,” Red Harvest replied. Rather than displaying his feelings, the face of his helmet began to scroll the facts he was relaying to Sam. “Eight Loader Bots, three EXP-Loader Bots, four War Loaders, two SGT Loaders, 10 Hyperion soldiers, four Infiltrators, four snipers, one assassin, four Technicals, and a floating cargo barge.”

“No idea what’s in the barge?” Sam asked. 

“I cannot see through it.” 

Fair enough. “Bogue?” 

“At the back of the soldiers.” 

That was about what Sam expected. He’d show up to claim he wasn’t a coward, then sit back in safety and prove that he was while others did his dirty work. “Good. Get to position, and I’ll see you on the other side.” 

For just a few minutes, the town was a mad hive of activity. Last minute preparations were made, worried farewells were said, last kisses were given, and everyone scrambled into their assigned places. Once they had…

Silence. 

The place was quiet as one of the abandoned ghost towns, looking for all the world like the people of Rose Creek had abandoned it. That was exactly what they were hoping Bogue’s men were going to think. Any time they could buy, any surprise they could steal, might be the difference between winning and losing this day and this planet.  
The silence broke first out in the trenches, where Jack and Teddy were braced against the wall with a dozen others, concealed by the cover Emma had grown for them, listening to the rumbling approach of the Technicals. 

“Wait, wait…” Jack murmured, listening with the most experienced ears of the lot. They were getting closer, but not quite close enough yet. “Wait…” 

Three seconds later, he simultaneously slammed the detonator and shouted, “NOW!” 

Three of the four vehicles were blown apart by the blast, pieces and men flying in every direction as they flipped up the cover on their trench to begin firing on the one left, still charging toward them. Jack leapt out of the trench and slammed his first turret down, sending controlled bursts of fire toward the Technical’s roof-mounted gun as he ran for the other end of the trench to place the other. Meanwhile, the people in the trench tried to keep as much cover as they could while continuing to fire. 

Some were successful. Others weren’t. 

They were civilians with mere hours of training. They’d never been in a pitched battle before. They were doing their best, but their best could only be so good. For some, the results were tragic – but not for all. 

Teddy Q threw the sticky grenade that blew the last vehicle just before it could reach them. He couldn’t spare more than a second to be proud of himself before noticing that the Loader Bots were advancing. “Aim for the legs,” he muttered to himself. He’d learned that at the Torgue Arena, watching Billy Rocks disable one after another. The others he fought beside had been taught the same thing when Goodnight Robicheaux had started their shooting lessons. It had been hard enough on stationary targets, though, and then they hadn’t been under the Loaders’ steady machine-gun fire. They’d only managed to take out four of eight with the EXP-Loaders started rushing forward. 

“FALL BACK!” Jack roared. If they didn’t outrun the EXP-Loaders, they were either going to be blown apart or electrocuted, and he didn’t have much faith in these folks’ ability to shoot the legs out of them before they could reach them. They could be counted on to follow orders, though, and they all left the trench and bolted for the next line of defense as fast as they could go. 

They ran past Emma, whose raised fist had begun to glow. Right in front of the Hyperion bots, four Threshers rose out of the ground at once. Usually Emma used her powers to wither threshers, not grow them, but she managed it despite her limited experience. The aggressive tentacled plants spat acid at the wave of bots, dissolving some of them to nothing and distracting the others long enough to let Jack, Teddy, and the others get to cover. The effort left Emma exhausted, stumbling toward her next battle station, but Red Harvest materialized out of nowhere to sweep up under her arm and give enough support that they could make a quick escape under the remaining Threshers’ cover. 

The next wave of bots was advancing, including a few of the bigger, tougher WAR Loaders and the first few human soldiers. Emma’s previous day’s work came in handy at last, the cryo-vines freezing enemies solid and holding them in place for Red Harvest to slide in and shatter them with his sword. Jack had re-set his turrets, with Faraday’s behind them, the shields on them providing additional much-needed cover along with the firepower. 

“Fucking bullet sponges,” Faraday growled at the bots as they pushed forward. WAR Loaders were heavily armored, not so easy to take out at the knees, and one of them had a fucking rocket launcher. He focused his fire on that one, knowing it was likely to do the most damage to the people and property it aimed at. He nearly had it when he saw Vasquez fall in the middle of the street, even as the Hyperion soldier he’d been battling fell at the same time. 

Faraday cursed again, gave the rocket-launching bot one last blast to finish it off, and went running for Vasquez with the revival pack. “C’mon, jackass, no time for dying!” he yelled, slapping the pack onto Vasquez’s arm. It was in that most inappropriate and inopportune of moments that Faraday realized that Vasquez had arms like a marble statue. “Wow,” he said, just as Vasquez was coming to. Shit, shit, he’d said that out loud. “Um…do you work out?” 

Vasquez laughed as he got to his feet, reloaded his guns, and went running for a better place to do his shooting. “Ask me again later, _guero_!” Vasquez shouted, firing one-two with his pistols and shooting a Hyperion soldier in the head. “Ask nice, and I might even give you a workout demonstration!” 

It wasn’t something Faraday had considered before, but now that he did…

“Shit, I’ll even buy you dinner!” Faraday laughed, re-establishing a turret in a new spot and using Ethel to blast the right off the other WAR Loader. 

No sooner had they cleared that wave than more approached. Emma was doing her damnedest, forcing firemelons up out of the ground for the ones with guns to make flaming traps out of, sending venomous Threshers after the bots, but she was wearing herself out quickly, using her abilities more in a day than she ever had in her life. Eventually she had to fall back and rely on her shotgun for a while, or she wasn’t going to have anything left. 

Luckily, the others were more than doing their parts. Billy was like a Guardian Wraith with both his knives and his pistols, a picture of deadly elegance and precision. If Goodnight’s absence affected his fighting at all, it was invisible to anyone watching him. Red Harvest had that same sort of grace, shifting effortlessly back and forth between long-distance sniper fire and close-as-a-kiss sword fighting. 

“Red!” Sam called out in between shots on a SGT Loader. He reloaded one pistol with a flick of his wrist while he fired the one in the other hand, chipping quickly away at the pieces that held the SGT’s guns on. “Where’s the cargo barge?” 

“I cannot see it.” A _concerned_ emoticon popped up on Red Harvest’s helmet. He’d seen it when Bogue was first advancing on the town, but sometime in the heat of the battle, it had disappeared. 

Sam cursed, because he couldn’t see it, either. Whatever that meant, it wasn’t anything good. Worse yet, whatever it was, it would be a surprise. Sam _hated_ surprises.  
“Keep an eye out!” he called to Red. The SGT’s guns detached with Sam’s next two shots, falling to the ground as useless hunks of metal. 

As they began to run out of surprises of their own, Rose Creek’s position grew harder to hold. Still, they were holding it. Faraday looked for his next target, and while he was looking, his next target found him. The Infiltrator’s bullet tore through his shoulder, and the pain pulled a grunt out of him even as he spun around and emptied a whole clip into the previously invisible soldier. “Infiltrators are in!” he hollered, clapping a hand over his shoulder to slow the bleeding as he scrambled for cover. 

That was Emma’s cue for her next party trick: all at once, she forced every single plant she’d established around the town released its pollen. A yellow cloud overwhelmed the town, coating the cloaked soldiers with a fine dust that made them instantly visible again. 

Vasquez shot one in the head and sneezed loudly, three times in quick succession. Hopefully some of those Hyperion bastards _also_ had allergies – if they did, Vasquez wouldn’t be nearly as annoyed by all the sneezing he was going to be doing until the pollen cloud dampened. He had to admit, though, the pollen was doing its job – the Infiltrators, terrifying ghosts of the battlefield, were now no more dangerous than standard Hyperion infantry. Vasquez was actually starting to think they could win this thing. 

Then, a Runner with a distinctive eridium-purple paint job came flying in from the south, and the few ECHO-links in town all fired up with the same panicked warning. 

“ _They’ve got a Constructor! A gotdamn Super-Badass Constructor! Deep cover, go go go, now!_ ” 

Shots rang out from the Runner, eliminating robots and human soldiers both with equal efficiency. Occasionally a bullet would cause them to catch fire, but more often than not they were gone before the flames even had a chance to be a bother, killed with a single shot to the head or the main sensor, no scope necessary. 

A Constructor, especially a Super-Badass Constructor, was the worst news they possibly could have gotten, but Billy Rocks was laughing as he ran with the others for the saloon, the designated deep cover location. He couldn’t help it, even as mad as he was to see that damn purple Runner again, because he’d just discovered that his stupid hopeful heart was right. 

Goodnight came back. 

He was already there when Billy came sliding across the saloon floor. There was no time for a reunion, not right then – all Billy could do was grab Goodnight’s hand as the crew started regrouping. 

“A Super-Badass Constructor can holo-print new bots, more or less an unlimited number of them,” Sam said, quickly laying out what was coming their way. “Expect more of everything we just saw, and know that they’re gonna keep on coming until we can take the Constructor out. This model is shielded, so anybody who’s got electrical weapons or grenades, get ‘em – we’ll have to take the whole shield down before we can even start on its armor. When it’s not making bots, it’s going to be sweeping a high-energy laser beam with range like a sniper around. That laser can cut through you, me, and just about anything else human-sized in about four seconds.” 

“The least protected part of it is the lens,” Goodnight continued for Sam. There was no trace of the sharp-edged panic that had gripped him on and off over the last few days. “The more we can hit that, the more damage we can do at once.” 

“Corrosives once we get the shield down?” Vasquez asked. He was pretty sure of that, but a Constructor was one thing he’d not faced before. 

“You got it,” Jack said. “It’s likely to put down a couple of turrets, too. Corrosives are best for going after them, as well.” 

“Watch for Surveyors,” Billy added. The experienced members of the group would already know to keep a lookout for the little flying bots that could repair shields and armor on their fellows, but the rest he thought bore reminding. 

Sam nodded. That had more or less everything covered. “Everyone back to your stations, fast, before they know we know what’s coming,” he said. 

One and all, they scattered, civilians and warriors alike. 

“Let’s go, Billy,” Goodnight said, and the two of them were off to the highest point in town, the roof of the water tower. No one else on Pandora could make the shot on the Constructor from that distance, but Goodnight knew without a doubt that he could. Emma sprinted for her spot on the hotel’s roof, where she’d have a view of the battlefield that would let her put the right dangerous plants in the right places. Red Harvest flickered out of sight as he ran out the door, off to find a flanking position where he could take some of their trouble by surprise. Faraday, Vasquez, Sam, Jack, and Teddy all poured back into the street to start cutting a path through the newly constructed bots. 

“I knew you’d come back,” Billy said as he reached the top of the tower with Goodnight, crouching behind the makeshift cover they’d nailed up there the day before. He was grinning. How in the hell was he grinning when they were almost certainly about to die? 

“Yeah?” Goodnight laughed as he reloaded his rifle, and he was grinning, too. This, this right here was why he had come back. Because everybody had to die sometime, but the only way he wanted to die was looking at Billy Rocks. 

“Yeah, you left this.” Billy pulled Goodnight’s flask from his vest and tossed it over to him. 

Laughing again, Goodnight took a drink from the flask and popped up to line up his first targets, neatly dispatching one and then the other. Billy did the same, taking out a few closer targets before they both dove for cover again when the return fire came. You didn’t have to hate what you were firing at, Goodnight thought as he passed the flask to Billy. You just had to love what it would destroy. 

“It’s like my daddy used to say…” Goodnight began, then moved up for another shot. He seemed to forget about it when he ducked back down. 

“What?” Billy asked, because whatever stupid old Eden-6 saying Goody was about to ramble on, Billy had decided he wanted to hear it. He leaned around the cover to fire twice, then pressed his back against it once more. “What did he say, Goody?” 

Where had he been going with that? Goodnight was sure that whatever it was had been brilliant, but damned if he could remember it now. “Well, my daddy said a lot of things,” he said with a helpless shrug, and they both dissolved into laughter again before going for their next round of targets. 

Yes, if he was going to die like this, laughing with Billy, maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad.

* * *

The battle for Rose Creek was on once again, fiercer and bloodier than ever. They took the majority of the men down, but the bots kept coming and coming, each one replaced as quickly as it was destroyed. And the damn _laser_ \- Sam’s estimate of four seconds to destroy a man hadn’t been an exaggeration. Faraday only caught one second of its fire before he got to cover, and he was pretty sure he was officially 25% dead. A couple others weren’t so lucky.

“We gotta take that thing out,” he said, breathing through the pain as he and Sam found themselves behind the same piece of cover. He could see that Sam had taken a shot, too, breathing heavy with blood dripping down his sleeve.

“You got an idea?” Sam asked. 

“Think so.” 

“What do you need?” 

“Cover.” 

Sam nodded. So a suicide mission, then. He never would have expected it from the man he’d met drunk and complaining just days before. Sam was impressed; he would have said so directly if he didn’t know that Faraday would just wave it off. “You know what?” he said instead. “We’ll go on and call that Lancer yours now.” 

Faraday laughed and made his run for the stash of corrosive grenades. 

In the street, Horne was taking bots down like a tornado. Turrets, guns, axe – he even _punched_ one, and the bot was the one that went down! He was old, but he sure as hell hadn’t gotten soft living alone in the Frozen Waste. Watching him now, Teddy could see why Colonel Jack Horne had been the most feared commando in the whole Dahl army. 

Teddy did his best to provide backup, him and his shotgun sticking with Horne, blasting at the Loaders’ legs to knock them down so Horne could finish them off. He was getting better and better at it as the battle wore on. He was holding up pretty well, too, despite the pain in his wounded arm. Even with the EXP-Loader’s self-destruct blast threw him across the street and onto the ground, knocking the shotgun out of his hand, he still had his head on straight. 

That wasn’t enough to be ready for the Hyperion assassin droid that materialized in front of him. The droid was shaped much like Red Harvest, just a little broader and shorter, with a helmet covered in spikes. He was dressed in the distinctive Hyperion black and yellow, and as Horne turned around and saw him, he realized that he should have expected this particular assassin droid to appear. It was Hyperion and Bogue. Of course Denali would be along for the ride. 

Jack threw his axe, only to see it deflected with a flash of Denali’s yellow blades. The droid turned around to face Jack, and unlike Red Harvest, his helmet face showed nothing but a shiny black void. Jack fired on him, a precise burst of fire with his assault rifle, once, twice, shots going directly to center mass, and Denali kept advancing on him. He stumbled at one hit, but he still kept coming. 

Denali’s shortswords flickered to glowing yellow life again, and he slashed one across Jack’s chest and stabbed with the other. Jack looked to where he thought eyes might be and fired again. Denali’s slashing sword was now plunged into his gut, and even as consciousness slipped away, he was trying to throw down a turret to give the others a little more cover. He was an old man. He’d lived a life that had been both good and bad at different turns, but he had no doubt now that if he could just buy Teddy a little more time to get away, Jack’s consciousness would rejoin the great purple entropy of the universe just as the Holy Book promised. As he finally fell to the ground, it was with the peaceful knowledge that he had done all he could. 

Denali moved on, slipping into the hotel, killing two more men on his way up to the balcony. The commando had been only a minorly important target, the young man next to him even more insignificant. He had been deployed for one primary purpose: the Siren. Now that Bogue knew she existed, Bogue wanted her – preferably alive. Denali reached the roof easily, armed with the eridium collar that would bring the Siren under control and bind her to Bogue’s commands. She would be the next rung on Bogue’s ladder to the top of Hyperion, whether she liked it or not. 

Emma felt him coming. She turned around and fired on him—no, tried to fire. She was out of shells. The gun clicked fruitlessly. Emma fumbled into her ammo pouch, only to find that it was empty as well. Her hands shook as Denali took another step toward her with the collar, and another. She reached for her Siren power, but that well was dry after summoning up another batch of cryo-vines to slow the Loaders’ onslaught. Denali came closer still, and panic rose in Emma’s throat. She frantically looked for a place to run, but she’d already backed up until she was at the roof’s edge. She couldn’t take a two-story drop, not and still be able to get away after. 

Denali stepped forward once more and drew one of his blades. Emma didn’t know what he intended, but looking at the collar in Denali’s left hand and remembering what Sam had said about how if Bogue knew what she was, he would have tried to take her, she could take a guess. Cold, rational thought stamped down her fear, and Emma decided that she’d die before she let them take her. She could swan-dive off this roof, and even if it meant she never got to see the victory she paid for, at least she’d know that she had deprived Bogue of one thing he wanted. 

Emma took the breath she thought would be her last, and then instead of falling to her death she saw a glowing red sword come through the front of Denali’s chest. The assassin fell forward, sliding off the blade, and where he had stood, Red Harvest flickered into visibility. Emma stared, stunned, still reeling from how fast it had all happened. She wasn’t even sure it _had_ happened until she forced herself to look away from Denali’s body to see an animated angry table-flipping emoticon projected from Red Harvest’s helmet. 

Right. Well. Pretty reasonable feeling under the circumstances. 

With that thought, Emma jogged to the other edge of the roof to take the ladder down. She had more work to do, and she was going to need more ammunition to do it.  
“Cover me!” she heard Faraday shout as she descended, followed by the rumble of the Runner’s engine coming to life. 

Up on top of the water tower, Billy and Goodnight must have heard him as well. They had been focusing their fire on the Constructor, working bit by bit to take its shield down and pick off the Surveyors that kept swooping in to attempt repairs. The shield was fully depleted now, which meant Faraday finally had his opening. He just had to get there.  
Until then, Billy and Goodnight had been moving back and forth, periodically ducking back behind the corrugated metal wall to protect themselves while reloading or to avoid a round of enemy fire. Now they were fully committed to making sure Faraday reached his goal. The shots from the water tower came faster now, deadly accurate, swiftly stopping each of the bots that were chasing Faraday as he charged the Constructor. Next they went for the turrets, three shots each to remove the Constructor’s outside defenses. The Runner was still taking heavy fire, but they were cutting it down bit by bit. The men guarding the Constructor had to go next – one on the left, one on the right, and Goodnight was just about to finish off the smug-looking bastard in the middle when the Constructor’s laser fired up again. 

This time, it was pointed at the water tower. It cut through their cover like a piece of cheesecake, and then it started on them. One second to knock Goodnight to his knees, two seconds to have Billy falling onto his back, leaning against what remained of their cover. Two more seconds to burn through Billy completely, leaving Goodnight’s flask to topple from his pocket to the ground. One more second to take Goodnight’s balance, send him stumbling backward as he tried to reach for Billy. The fall took care of the rest – three stories down, flat on his back, and Goodnight Robicheaux breathed his last. 

A shot from a WAR Loader dealt out the last damage that the Runner could take. It exploded into flames, and Faraday had no idea how he managed the tuck-and-roll maneuver that got him and his sack full of corrosive grenades out of that. He’d taken even more fire on his mad dash into the mouth of the dragon, and now he was burned, broken, and bleeding. It was only sheer determination that kept him moving forward. Maybe he and Emma were long-lost siblings or cousins or something, he thought, the odd bit of musing floating through the fog of pain. Same red hair, same mule-worthy stubbornness…yeah, probably related. Maybe he’d let her give him away at his wedding. 

He was almost there. The asshole with the eyepatch shot him twice more, and still Faraday kept walking. This was the only chance he was going to get. The only chance _any_ of them were going to get. If he didn’t get close enough to take that Constructor out before the asshole realized what was happening, nobody was walking out of this town alive. It didn’t matter if he did or not, if he could just make sure _somebody_ did. 

Faraday fell to his knees, just about ten feet from the Constructor. And the eyepatch jackass was _laughing_ at him. Faraday looked up at him, and with what little air could still move through his lungs, he laughed too. The bastard thought he had him, huh? Thought he was just going to snicker and watch Joshua Faraday bleed out? This, Faraday thought with a grin, was going to be the most badass death in the history of Pandora – exactly what he’d always wanted. 

He didn’t think he’d ever enjoyed a sight as much as the look on Asshole McEyepatch’s face when the slick-looking bastard realized that he’d just thrown twelve corrosive bombs at him and his Constructor. It was so much fun Faraday almost didn’t care that the explosions were definitely going to take him, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding Vasquez and Pollen: So there I was, looking at the various soldier types that Hyperion has to offer, figuring out how to deal creatively with the invisible Infiltrator guys, and I looked out my window at the beautiful spring weather and vicious damn trees that have covered my entire life in yellow dust, and then stopped just short of actually exclaiming "Eureka!" And once pollen got into the game, well, clearly _someone_ had to suffer for it. Sorry, Vas, I love you, and I stand with you in allergic solidarity.


	6. A Reckoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they all lived happily ever after, except for Bartholomew Bogue.

With the Constructor down, the rest was easy. The last of the bots came down one by one, the last sniper shot down from his perch, and finally, Sam Chisolm was able to start advancing on Bogue. He shot both of the men flanking him without even blinking. Sam just kept walking, guns drawn, cutting down each man and bot that thought to stand in his way, until at least he was standing face to face with Bartholomew Bogue. There, Sam holstered both his pistols. 

“Sam Chisolm, I assume?” Bogue asked. He still looked calm and cool as ever, somehow. He was actually arrogant enough to think that he could still win this. “Of Fyrestone settlement?” 

“That’s right,” Sam said, just as steady and easy. 

“Can’t say I recall,” Bogue said, smiling faintly. “I’ve managed a lot of settlements on this miserable rock over the years.” 

“Managed?” Sam didn’t think anything could possibly serve to make him any angrier at Bogue than he already was, but that one word succeeded. “Managed. That’s what you call what you do to people here? Managing?” 

“Of course,” Bogue said, delighted that he was able to ruffle Sam Chisolm’s feathers. The conventional wisdom was that it was nearly impossible to do, and there was little Bogue loved more than successfully flouting conventional wisdom. That was how he'd gotten to Pandora in the first place.

But he’d wasted enough time on this nobody already. “Welcome to the world of business, Mr. Chisolm,” he said, smiling as he considered what a perfect exit line that was and drew his gun. 

Sam drew faster, fired off a single shot to Bogue’s right hand and sent the gun flying from his grip. For the first time in all this, fear showed in Bogue’s eyes. “Should’ve called that ship of yours the Hubris,” Sam said, and watched with a pleasure he might judge himself for later as Bogue began backing away. 

“I, ah…Fyrestone, you said?” Bogue asked, beginning to panic with Sam’s gun now aimed at his heart. “I think I remember now. Fyrestone, Chisolm. Yes.” 

“Oh, good,” Sam said, taking a step forward for each one Bogue took backward. “I hope so, because I want you to know _exactly_ why I’m gonna kill you today.” 

“N-n-now there’s no need for that.” Bogue had run out of space to back up to, tripping backward on the steps of the town hall where he had first brought this upon himself. He kept scrambling backward, into the building, panicking and running out of ideas for how he might escape the fate bearing down on him. 

“But there is,” Sam quietly said. He knelt on the floor next to Bogue, his pistol now pressed hard into the man’s side. “See, I’d kill you just for what you’ve done here today. You killed my friends, killed innocent people, tried to steal what ain’t yours. That’d be reason enough. But the only reason I’m here in the first place is you. You, and Fyrestone. It was a nice little settlement before Hyperion showed up – but I guess you know that, don’t you? You’re the one old Handsome Jack sent to wreck up the place. And while you were there, you met my family.” 

The quiet tone of Sam’s voice was more frightening than any amount of yelling could be. He was in full control, knew exactly what he was doing, and the grief-fueled rage underneath it all was reined in just enough to let Sam finish what he needed to say. 

“You shot Carl Chisolm, because he wasn’t gonna hand his land over to you or work in your mine. Your men violated his wife, Mary Chisolm, while their daughter screamed and covered her eyes, and then they killed them both and got on with turning that whole settlement into a graveyard. That was you, Mr. Bogue, and you’re gonna pay for that and every other life you’ve stolen or ruined.” 

“P-please…” Bartholomew Bogue was learning what fear really was for the first time. He’d always been too arrogant, to sure of himself to experience fear. He’d been that way all his life, and it had served him well up until now. Now, however, it meant he didn’t have the first idea what to do but beg. 

“Yes, go ahead with that,” said Sam, who was learning how monsters were made. How a righteous rage could be turned to unthinking cruelty. “Beg for your life. I want to hear it.”

Bogue would have, too. He would have begged for his life. But then a pistol shot rang out from the door, and Bogue never got the chance.

For years after, Sam would tell people that when Emma Cullen shot Bogue through the head with his own gun, she saved him. Not his life – that wasn’t in danger. She’d saved his soul, ended Bartholomew Bogue quickly before Sam could see how much he could enjoy inflicting suffering. She looked like an avenging angel in that moment, and Sam wondered if she’d ever find out that Sirens had wings. 

They walked out of the town hall together, into the killing field that Emma’s beloved town had become. No more shots were fired – now they were collecting their dead and treating their wounded. Teddy Q and Red Harvest each had a shoulder under Jack Horne’s arms, dragging the giant of a man to the doctor. Teddy had a makeshift bandage on his arm and what looked to be a broken nose, but Red Harvest didn’t appear to have taken so much as a scratch. Sam’s eyes got a little bigger as he looked to the south and saw Vasquez, bloody and covered in soot, doing his best imitation of a run with Faraday in his arms. 

“Throw me a medkit, quick!” he shouted, and then the poor man stumbled as he sneezed again. 

“He’s _alive_?” Sam sounded as shocked as he looked, but he didn’t waste any time running to Vasquez with the syringe kit. 

“Barely!” Vasquez called, and then sneezed once more, still running to meet Sam. 

“Well holy shit.” If that miracle had managed to happen, then…

Sam turned to look at the water tower, Emma doing the same. He knew Goodnight and Billy had both gone down there, but he didn’t see any bodies. If they were going to _stay_ dead, there’d be bodies. 

Emma was staring at the water tower, sure she had to be missing something, that they must have fallen somewhere else. “How did they..?” 

Sam laughed like the breath had been knocked out of him, soft and disbelieving. “New-U,” he said. “Billy was Hyperion, so of course he’s in the system, and I guess at some point they must’ve gotten Goody in there, too. We’ll just have to find out where they regenerated.” 

They had still lost a lot of good people. There was no way Sam could let out a cheer. But _his_ people, his crazy, brave, stupid, amazing, _magnificent_ people, had made it through, and they had put an end to Bart Bogue’s reign of terror. For Sam Chisolm, that was good enough.

* * *

**The Icehole, Liar’s Berg**  
“A _week_ , Goody?” Billy smacked Goodnight’s shoulder with the back of his hand, and then pulled him in for the fiercest hug he could manage. “How did it take you a _week_ to come back to me?”

Goodnight chuckled softly, breathing in deeply to take in Billy’s scent as he leaned into him. “Took that long to walk from the New-U in the Badlands to the closest Fast Travel,” he said. 

Billy pulled back just enough to look incredulously at him. “Why in the hell did you walk?” 

The grin was already breaking on Goodnight’s face as he started to explain. “Well, I reckon the Technical’s still parked out by Rose Creek, and nine years ago you said to me, and I quote, _if you ever risk your life in a Runner again I will kill you myself_. And since I already pushed my luck on that once...” 

That was Goody, always somehow managing to be sweet and infuriating at the same time. Billy pulled him close again, laughing, and decided that fussing more could wait. “Come on,” he said taking Goodnight’s hand and tugging him toward the stairs at the back of the bar. “I got us a room, and we have some catching up to do.” 

* * *

**Leni Frankel’s house, Rose Creek**  
Jack really ought not to have been up again already. It had only been a week since he’d lost nearly all his blood in the middle of the street, and even with a doctor’s help he needed rest to recuperate fully. Instead, here he was with hammer and nails, fixing Leni Frankel’s front door so it wouldn’t keep blowing open in every strong wind. He was just finished and admiring his own work when Leni returned from her trip to the general store, arms crossed and giving him a half-hearted glare. 

“I never asked you to do that,” she said pointedly, but she was already starting to smile. 

“I know,” Jack replied, not even trying to hide his grin. “But I did it anyway.” 

Leni sighed and walked up to take his arm and bring him inside the house. “I guess I’d better have you in for coffee, then. But let me remind you, Mr. Horne, I am now very good at throwing knives.” 

* * *

**Emma Cullen’s farmhouse, outside of Rose Creek**  
Emma waved off the thanks for lodging dismissively. “It’s the least I could do, with everything you two did for this town. I wouldn’t be standing here if not for you, nor would this house. And I honestly feel his condition’s my fault, for all that it was a necessary evil.” 

“Well, we appreciate it anyway,” Faraday said. He was sporting a new mechanical arm that he was already brainstorming attachments for, and the ECHO-eye that had replaced the one he’d lost to corrosive grenade splash actually worked a lot better than the old one. “And don’t beat yourself up about Vas – who knew anybody was _that_ allergic to cryo-vine pollen?” Faraday sighed, placing his metal hand over his heart. “My poor delicate flower cannot handle the other flowers attempting to compete with him.” 

“I can hear you, _guero_!” Vasquez shouted from the guest room, before falling into another fit of coughing and sneezing. The initial allergic reaction had led to a sinus infection, and while Pandoran doctors were great at fixing traumatic injuries, they were terrible at fixing illness. There wasn’t much to do but wait it out, and no way was Faraday letting Vasquez take his fucked-up sinuses into the Fast Travel, so they’d be waiting it out in Rose Creek. 

The kettle on the stove whistled, and Emma laughed just the tiniest bit as she poured the hot water over the tea and honey. She still didn’t feel much like laughing, most of the time. She’d lost her husband less than a month ago, and every day still felt like a struggle. She’d lost friends in the battle for her town, too, and that drained some of the laughter out of her, as well. Having Vasquez and Faraday in the house had been good for her, though. One or the other of them could usually manage to make her smile a bit at least once a day, and helping Faraday figure out how to get around with his new prosthetics and making tea with honey for Vasquez gave her something to focus on other than her own pain and loss. She’d miss them when they moved on. 

“Here, take him his tea,” she said with a little smile, handing Faraday the mug. “And tell him that if he doesn’t stop being dramatic, I’m going to use his own rope trick on him.” 

* * *

**Somewhere in the Dust**  
Tracking the bandit boss known as Heavy Metal hadn’t been hard. They’d been a week out from Rose Creek when the people of Overlook had sent their request for help, from there it had just been one hop on the Fast Travel and an hour’s driving to roll right up to Heavy Metal’s front gate. A man whose entire persona was built around leather, spikes, and playing the loudest, ear-bleedingest music possible at all times wasn’t exactly carefully covering his tracks, so the hunt had been simple. The hard part was fighting through the small army of lighter metal idiots who called themselves his gang. 

Not that any fighting was but _so_ hard with Red Harvest for backup. He and Sam shared a methodical approach to battle that made them ideal partners in doling out justice. And that was what this was: justice. The bounty wasn’t much, because the people of Overlook couldn’t afford much. Sam had discovered, though, that after Rose Creek, the shine had come off of bounty hunting. He didn’t want to work on behalf of the corporations, the wealthy, or even the Central Government anymore. He wanted to help the people who really needed it. 

Red Harvest was just continuing his pursuit of _a challenge_. The jobs Sam was looking at taking now were bigger than anything that got put up for a high bounty, because the really exciting bad guys weren’t pissing off people with lots of money. They were stomping on little people. So now, instead of drifting around killing the same old boring people, Red Harvest was flying around on jump pads that also acted as subwoofers, slicing through bandits to the sound of music that he couldn’t decide if it was amazing or terrible, and working his way through the base alongside the only person he’d call a friend so they could kill a guy who had a badass gun made from an electric guitar and in the process make sure that none of these assholes tortured or stole from anyone in the town of Overlook again. 

Okay, so the justice part was seeming pretty cool, too. 

They reached the top of the tower of speaker/jump-pads, finally landing on a stage with the aforementioned spike-bedecked, leather-clad bandit leader. 

"Heavy Metal?" Sam called out, shouting to be heard over the music. 

"Yeaaaaaaaaahhhhh!" the bandit wailed, violently hitting a power chord on his guitar-gun before flubbing half the notes as he attempted to shred a sick solo. 

The fact that he wasn't nearly as cool as he thought he was would just make putting the murderous bully down even better, Sam thought. 

"My name is Sam Chisolm," he said, and decided to test out his new introduction for the first time. "This is my associate, Red Harvest, and we represent the people of Overlook. We're here for your head."


End file.
